


Beginner's Friday Nights

by SelahSeftali



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, British Slang, Dirty Talk, Drag Queens, Drunken Shenanigans, Evil Twins, F/F, F/M, Fingering, Food Porn, Frottage, Hanukkah, Homophobic Slurs, I hate them with a fire that burns, Infidelity, Latin ballroom dancing, M/M, Masturbation, Mistletoe, Oral Sex, Rimming, Silver Screen diva worship, Slow Burn, Song Lyrics, Trans Character, UST, ambiguous feelings about jazz, and that douchcanoe Ted Cruz, cross dressing, dick jokes aplenty, doggy sidekicks, family dramarama, feminists sheroes, frank and hilarious discussions of sex and sexuality, hating on homophobic Republicans, if there is such a thing, kickass Halloween parties, kids say creepy things, men dancing together, non-explicit underage sex, nosy old biddies, sex toy snafus, sexy nerds on bikes, small town paparazzi, smoking doobies, specifically that douchwaffle Greg Abbott, well-intentioned stalking, writers block
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-20
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-14 00:01:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 41,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3401012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SelahSeftali/pseuds/SelahSeftali
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will Bloom and Ian Alvarez-Carlisle are former college roommates and best friends who have become estranged in the years following graduation until a night in Sin City comes back to haunt them. Turns out their little joke at a Vegas wedding chapel a decade ago was more legally binding than either of them originally thought. But a quicky divorce is soon derailed by meddling friends and family, and the men find their paths crossing on and off the dance floor at a beginner's Latin dance class in Austin, Texas. A thoughtful and unusual romantic comedy drama about the complex meaning of love, friendship, and family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Preface: Pithoprakta

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All rights reserved. Content may not be rewritten, published, or redistributed without the author's consent. This story is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise stated, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
> 
> Unbeta'd. Read at your own peril.

“Who the hell comes to Las Vegas to see the symphony," Will complained, crackling with his usual nervous energy as they left the Las Vegas Museum of Modern Art.

He walked with swift intention down the stone steps, stewing in his irritation, as Ian followed faithfully behind him in subdued amusement-- long hair shadowing his down-turned face, hands in his trouser pockets, shoulders shrugged against the unexpected chill of the dry desert air. They trickled down the long serpentine path of white stone steps that formed a lazy concrete river around the large multi-compound art complex that housed the Las Vegas Fine Arts Center-- a startlingly cold-white fortress standing out amidst the red-brown heat of the desert.

The LVMMA was currently hosting a very limited exhibit blending modern art with live jazz performance. Ian had lured Will with the promise of an impressive abstract sculpture exhibit. Only, he had failed to mention the price of admission was a slow, torturous death via hours of 1960's avant-garde jazz-- or whatever the hell it was they had just heard. It had been a test in maintaining one's sanity. Will glanced back at the sound of Ian snorting.

"Why are you so amused," Will grumbled, clear blue eyes firing, his boyish features twisted into a perturbed scowl.

"You," Ian answered simply, smothering a smile. "You hated it."

"However did you guess?"

"You've been grinding your teeth to dust for the last two hours. My face is starting to ache from having to look at you all night."

"Of course I hated it! Who could like what just happened to me in there? That wasn't a concert, it was a full-bodied physical assault to my senses!" Will halted in his angry near-jog and turned up toward Ian, waiting for him to catch up.

"Maybe that was the point," Ian shrugged and scratched his stubbled jaw, continuing his leisurely pace down the steps.

"To torture its audience into whimpering supplication, begging for mercy?"

"You and your histrionics," Ian snorted and rolled his eyes. "No, I meant, to make you think," he explained as he joined Will's side.

"I don't want to think ever again. Why think about something I just wanted to run away from? Screaming." Will turned to continue down the endless flight once more, now matching Ian's meandering gait, which only seemed to exacerbate his agitation.

"Maybe the unease you felt was intentional. By testing the very limits of a listener's preconceived notions of what music is, you're left with an underlying sense of dissatisfaction that will incite you to try to rationalize it by finding your own answers," Ian theorized.

Tall, quiet, and often reserved, Ian exuded a demeanor that was somehow both lackadaisical and intense. He was happy to be labelled a wallflower who might occasionally wander from his post if the promise of food was involved. But get him discussing art, literature, or sociopolitics, and Ian could wax long and poetic into the wee hours with any random stranger who cared to engage him.

"Are you serious? What kind of pretentious, bullshit  _music_ "-- he spit out the word, holding up his fingers in hand quotations-- "makes it's audience intensely uncomfortable on purpose? I thought I was going to have a seizure."

Will sighed impatiently when Ian paused on the steps to look up at the night sky, as he often did whenever he was in a new place where new stars might be discovered. Will often said that Ian had his head in the clouds, to which Ian usually retorted that Will could benefit from looking up every once in awhile. Ian continued, unfazed by Will's growing despite.

"Think about it," Ian began, still looking up at the stars. "Human beings as a species resist any kind of uncertainty. When we are confronted with something that is foreign to us, we feel compelled to reduce that uncertainty by any means necessary," he lectured pedantically.

"I'm going to reduce my uncertainty by repressing this memory and pretending it never happened. How the fuck they could call that music!" Will exploded, his hands bursting from his pockets. "I'm going to have nightmares about those sculptures coming to life, filled with the evil soul of avant-garde jazz, and coming to kill us all."  

Ian laughed. "Actually, those last pieces by Xenakis sounded pretty much like that. Particularly, the second of the two sounded less like music and more like...industrial audio sculpture," Ian spoke with a decreasingly tempered excitement, oblivious to whether or not Will was actually paying him any attention. "The way it begins, sparse and disjointed, and builds slowly, discordantly, as if mirroring the actual creative process of an artist not only mentally but physically creating a work." He was on a roll now, rambling away and finally picking up his pace, propelled by his own escalating enthusiasm. "I could just envision the concrete, metal, and stone as if the piece itself was literally under construction, in the very physical process of being built. What was your impression?" Will only grunted, his scowl growing darker.

"And the title itself," Ian continued, completely obtuse. "It's a Greek phrase meaning 'actions through probability,' as in the mathematical probability used to measure the likeliness an event will occur?"

"I know what a probability is," Will bit out between clenched teeth.

"Maybe what we heard was actually the sound of...trigonometry or something. I thought you being an engineering man, you'd appreciate that, at least."

"Except the entire piece is like a series of mathematical equations with numbers that can never add up!" Will finally capitulated at Ian's insistence on conversing about the confounded performance.

"It's kind of genius if you think about it."

"Yeah, a genius descending into madness and dragging us all down with him. It's a tragedy. It made my skin crawl."  

"See? We're learning already. Tragedy, as you call it, makes us think and forces us to find answers. You don't always want to be lulled into a false sense of complacency with soothing melodies and balanced harmonies."

"That's exactly what I want. I want to be drugged into submission by my jazz not have my soul ripped apart by it and left bloody and suffering. Music is meant to be felt not force the listener to think through it in order to not hate it."

"You didn't have to come with me." Ian sighed in feigned exasperation. Will only harrumphed. "Well, it's your turn now. What do ya wanna do?"

"This is Vegas. You're supposed to gamble away your life savings, numb the pain with alcohol abuse, and then go see Cirque du Soleil."

"I think we missed Cirque du Soleil, but we can always go back to the hotel casino, throw away money we don't have, and drown our sorrows in cheap cocktails," Ian offered lightly.

"God, no. I feel traumatized. The cacophony of pinging slot machines will probably trigger a flashback." Ian could not help but shake his head and smile at Will's penchant to hyperbolize. "I saw a cantina across the street. Let's heal our wounds with the soothing tempo of mariachi music and get wasted on margaritas."

"Sounds like a plan," Ian grinned.

***

The cantina looked like what one might expect from an old, local dive outside the strip-- cracked, plastic booths and scratched, lacquer-coated tables and tacky decor. But the place had a certain charm with colorful, mismatched wooden chairs, Christmas lights strung through the plastic plants, and stucco walls painted with murals of mountainscapes and desertscapes. The food was authentic and more than good enough for the price, and the drinks came in giant glasses. Ian watched as Will put away an entire trough of tortilla chips and salsa on his own.

"Apparently, trauma leaves you feeling famished," Ian observed dryly.

"Yup," Will spoke with a full mouth, unabashed, as he polished off the last of the chips and washed it down with a large gulp of margarita from his frosted glass mug. "I have a gaping hole in my soul that only Mexican food can fill." Will belched and dug into his carne en su jugo.

"Lovely," Ian intoned. "So, I thought we could hit up some shops tomorrow morning while I still have a few dollars to my name, get some tacky souvenirs for my parents or something," he said before taking a bite of his roasted chicken in mole sauce topped with a citrus salad. He hummed with unselfconscious pleasure at the warm, rich flavor of the dish.

Will watched him, amused. He often teased Ian that he need not bemoan his nonexistent sex life; he enjoyed food more than most people enjoyed sex, and weren't both appetites served by the same part of the brain, anyway? After Ian accompanied him to the campus health clinic during his last STD scare, Ian told Will he was the one who should probably eat more and sleep around less.

"Sure. Oh, that reminds me." Will turned to rummage through the pockets of his jacket thrown over the booth beside him. He withdrew a letter-sized envelope and slid it across the table. Now was as good a time as any, while Ian's mouth was in the process of being satisfied.

"What's this?" Ian picked up the envelope.

"Just a little graduation gift. Open it," Will urged, holding his breath.

Ian smiled with sweet surprise and opened the envelope. He withdrew a blue billfold packet and flipped it open, and his eyebrows nearly vanished into his hairline.

"You got me a plane ticket? To San Francisco?”

"Uh, yeah," Will began, thinking of how to break the news. "It's so you can come visit me."

"Why would I be visiting you in San Francisco," Ian inquired suspiciously, pinning Will with a stare.

"You know the architectural design firm I've been interning with?"

"Yeah...?"

"They offered me a job at their Bay area branch. I start two weeks after graduation."

"Shit," Ian sat back heavily in his booth. The waitress came then to refill their water and set down a fresh basket of chips, and Will was grateful for the distraction. He reached his hand toward the salty, warm tortilla crisps, but Ian quickly snatched the basket out of his reach, fixing him with an accusatory glare.

"How long have you known about the job?" Ian's calm tone belied his approaching meltdown.

"A couple weeks," Will admitted guiltily. Ian clenched his jaw in displeasure. "But I only just decided to take it," he added hastily. "Right before we left for our trip. I was trying to find the right time to tell you." Ian pursed his lips, his face betraying his internal struggle to process the news. "We've talked about this possibility, Ian. It's a great career opportunity for me. I'd be an absolute idiot to turn them down."

"I know," Ian pouted. "It's just...."

"And I only stalled on taking the job because of you," Will interjected quietly.

"I'm the last to know, aren't I?" A flash of guilt across Will's face told him he had figured right. "Your mom was worried how you'd take the news."

"You told my  _mother_  before you told me?!"

"I was trying to solicit her advice on how best to break it to you," Will defended.

Ian exhaled, agitated but deflating. "Well, this sucks. After nearly, what, eighteen years of school, I feel like we're finally just starting our lives, and now I have to do it without my best friend."

"I'm still your best friend. I'm not going to disappear from your life just because we don't live in the same city anymore," Will placated.

"Or state," Ian sulked.

"Or state," Will begrudged.

"Or time zone," Ian added, forlorn.

Will exhaled, reaching across the table to place a hand on Ian's arm. "That's why I suggested this trip. I thought it could be our last hurrah before everything got all crazy with the move and everything. Come on," Will urged as Ian remained silent. "It's not as if you're never going to see me again. That's what telephones and email are for. And of course I'll be back to visit when I can.

"All right," Ian decided, sitting upright again. "In that case, I think I'll have a few more drinks and live in denial for the next forty-eight hours or so."

"That's the spirit," Will smiled. "Next round is on me."

***

They stumbled noisily into their hotel room a few hours and several more rounds later. It was still fairly early according to Vegas standards.

"Shh," Will held up his finger to Ian's lips.

"Why are you shushing me? We're the only ones here," Ian said, pulling Will's finger-- which was threatening to poke him in the eye-- away from his face.

"Oh, yeah," Will giggled. "Then why are we standing here in the dark? Somebody should turn on a light or something." He walked toward the light switch, stumbling over a stray pair of shoes. "Ow! You need to stop leaving your shoes lying around. Someone could get hurt," Will admonished.

"Those are  _your_  shoes," Ian corrected.

"Oh. I really need to stop leaving my shoes lying around," Will giggled again, flipping the switch.

Ian rolled his eyes. "So, why are we here?"

"I have another present for you."

"After the last one, I'm afraid to even ask." Ian watched Will search his shoulder bag and pull out a small, flat Tupperware container.

"Here you go." Will presented it with a flourish, holding the plastic dish toward him proudly.

"What the heck is this?" Ian scowled benignly.

"Open it," Will smiled wide, pronouncing each of the deep triangular laugh lines framing his mouth, which often made him look impish and fairly gleamed now with devilish intent.

Ian shrugged and pried off the lid-- brow furrowed, mouth curling in good-natured curiosity. "You baked me cookies?"

"Not just any cookies. Special cookies," Will said with wide eyes that were meant to convey his meaning.

"Uh huh. Am I to assume from that ridiculous expression on your face that they're so special they're practically  _illegal_?"

"Practical, no. But illegal, yes."

"Is this why you were so nervous getting on the plane?" Ian's eyes were alight with teasing mischief. "Because you were about to smuggle drugs across state lines?" He laughed.

"Laugh all you want, but that's a felony, Ian. I risked a lengthy prison sentence for you to be able to enjoy these cookies on this little vacation we're having."

"How very noble of you," Ian mocked. "Thank you," he added more sincerely, before picking up a cookie and taking a bite.

***

They were lying side by side in one of the hotel beds, their heads toward the end, staring at the ceiling with rapturous fascination.

"I am  _sooo_  baked right now," Will announced, and Ian sniggered at the unintended pun.

"How potent did you make those things, anyway?"

"I don't know," Will shrugged. "I just used everything he gave me."

"Who gave you what?"

"Oh, Sasha. From down the hall. He got me the stuff and the recipe." Will smirked as if remembering something funny. "Once I told him they were for you, he fell all over himself trying to help me."

"Huh?"

"That tatted-up pothead's been trying to get into your pants forever."

"Sasha? Nah," Ian shook his head. "He's not even gay."

"Not many straight guys I know would stare at a guy's ass and lick their lips. So, I'm gonna go with gay."

"He did not," Ian scoffed.

"All right, then. What about the sugar?"

"What?"

"I mean, who actually borrows a cup of sugar from their neighbors, anyway, outside of, like, Mayberry?"

"Oh. Some people run out of sugar," Ian shrugged.

"Three times in one week? What's he doing, starting his own bakery?"

"He's got a girlfriend," Ian argued.

"Who?"

"Liz, that girl with the dreadlocks who was staying with him."

Will was laughing heartily now. "You know, for a gay guy, you have the  _worst_  gaydar. And that Lizzie chick? Is a lezzie."

"How do you know?"

"She has a girlfriend. We met her, remember?" Ian scowled, trying to recall. "Her name's Mary. The one with the pink hair?"

"Oh. I thought that was her sister." Will covered his eyes with his hands, still chuckling. "I guess that explains why they're so close."

"You are hopeless! Do we have anymore cookies?" Will searched the container on the floor blindly with his hand. "Oh, my god. I can't believe we ate them all! There's only one left." Will held up the last cookie. Ian took it from him and broke it in half, giving Will the bigger piece. "Best I ever ate," Will moaned around a mouthful of baked chocolatey goodness. "And besides...," He dug around in his jeans pocket as he licked the chocolate from his fingers. "There's this."

Will flipped open his cell phone and shoved it in front of Ian's face, so close it bumped Ian in the nose. Ian grabbed Will's wrist and held the phone at a reasonable distance. His eyes widened. It was a photo of a young man kneeling on a bed, wearing nothing but a pair of the teeny-tiniest, most brightly colored bikini briefs he had ever seen. The young man had bleach blond hair in long, soft spikes that contrasted with his thick dark eyebrows. He had lip, brow, and nipple piercings and tattoos all down one arm and across his chest and over his shoulder and down his other side. One of his hands was shoved down the front of his drawers, and his other arm was bent back over his shoulder as he licked his bicep and looked seductively into the camera. Ian began choking violently on the bite of cookie still in his mouth. He rolled onto his side, coughing loudly into his fist.

"Shit, man. It's not like you haven't seen a half-naked dude before." Will was unapologetic as he pounded on Ian's back. Dislodging the cookie from his throat, Ian rolled over and pushed Will's hand away from him.

"Is that Sasha from down the hall," Ian gasped, wiping his leaking eyes.

"Yep," Will announced proudly, completely unashamed.

"Where did you...how did you...and why the hell do you have that on your phone?"

"It's from a website. Jockyboys.com. Maybe you've heard of it?" Will laughed at the vaguely terrified look on Ian's face.

"I guess this is the point in the conversation when I ask you what propelled you to look up gay porn in the first place."

"Let's just say that I may have had drinks with the lesbian's girlfriend, Mary...."

"You know that makes her a lesbian, as well, don't you," Ian interrupted.

"Whatever," Will waved Ian off. "And then, in her vulnerable inebriated state, Gay Mary may have let it slip that our neighbor was a gay porn star. And then I may have pried her with cheap shots until she may have also let it slip that his porn name is Johnny Star. After which, I may have possibly gone straight home and looked him up on the Internets."

"I guess the only question I have is, 'Why?'"

"It's not for my personal pleasure or anything," Will defended in a tone of voice that suggested he really would not have cared even if Ian had thought the picture had been for Will's own private enjoyment. "I took it for you."

"Uh, thanks...I think. But I can find my own porn."

"I thought you might like to know just who was taking an interest in you. Give you a taste of the merchandise being offered before you decided to, you know, taste the merchandise," he drew out the final S-sound, like some lascivious hissing snake.

"Why do you keep saying, 'taste the merchandise?' It's sounds like you're picking out a watermelon."

"Yeah, but can you have sex with a watermelon? Actually, there was this one time...," Will began, staring off toward some vivid memory.

"Ohmygod, I don't think I want to know," Ian held up a hand.

"You really don't," Will said with wide eyes that spoke of past trauma. "It ends in agony and a burned ball sack."

"Oh, jesus." Ian grabbed the phone from Will's hand, cocking his head, and inspecting the picture more closely. "I did always kind of wonder what he looked like under his clothes."

"Not that his shredded tank tops and his sister’s skinny jeans left much to the imagination," Will grumbled, grabbing his phone back and cramming it into his jeans pocket.

“You’re just jealous because you wish you’d had the idea to pay your way through college by having sex on camera.”

“Damn straight I do! I’m going to be paying off my student loans until my grand kids retire. But Gay Mary said that all the money is in the gay stuff. She said half the men in gay porn are gay for pay. She said if I muscled up a bit more, I could be a stud or a stallion or something. Apparently, Sasha's what's known as a twink." Ian burst out laughing. "What?" Will sounded offended. “There's nothing wrong with educating yourself." Ian cocked a skeptical brow. "Hey, don't look at me like that. You’re the one who’s supposed to know this stuff."

"Oh, am I?" Ian smirked. "I guess I should've asked for the handbook when I got my gay card."

"You need to get with it, man. How else do you find what you're looking for on those gay chat sites?" Ian punched Will in the arm. "Ow! Okay, okay." Will held up his hands in self-defense. "You know I'm only joking." Ian huffed, crossing his arms over his chest. "Anyway, I always thought Sasha was kind of a creeper. And now I know what he does for a living...well, I still think he's kind of a creeper, but it is kind of flattering, though-- wanting to use all his supa-lova porno moves on you.”

"I don't need you to score me tricks," Ian said, looking Will in the eye.

"I'm just looking out for you, man."

"Thank god you're straight because your taste in guys sucks. I mean, like, on an epic level. That's certainly one thing I won't miss once you're gone." At the mention of Will's departure, Ian felt a swift drop in his high.

"Maybe I'd feel better about leaving if I knew there was someone around to look after you while I'm gone."

"Okay, I'm going to overlook the fact that even though I'm a grown-ass man, you think I still need looking after. But if I pretend that I can't possibly get along without you, does that mean you'll stay," Ian asked, hopeful.

"Probably not," Will sighed. "But you'll make me feel like even more of a dick, though, if that makes you feel better."

"A little," Ian admitted. "Oh, speaking of dicks, I didn't even ask. How did Angelica take the news about the job?"

"Who the fuck is Angelica," Will asked.

"You must be really high if you can't even remember your own girlfriend."

"Her name is Agnes."

"What did I say?"

"You called her Angelica."

"Oh." Ian burst into a fit of giggles, rolling around on the bed.

" _Jee-zus_ ," Will chuckled, pushing Ian away from him. "Somebody can't hold their pot cookies."

"So, how did Agnes take the news?"

"We broke up."

"Ouch. So, not so well then."

Will shrugged. "It was a mutual decision. We both realized that we'd be going our separate ways after graduation, anyway."

"You didn't at least ask her to come with you," Ian asked, surprised.

"She wouldn't have come even if I had."

"Why not? I thought you really liked this one. She lasted almost six months. That's about five and half months longer than ninety-nine percent of your relationships."

"You know why not. Agnes and I worked for this long because I knew she'd never pressure me for a commitment and she wanted a final fling before graduation."

"Man wasn't made to walk this earth alone," Ian quoted tritely.

"I'm not alone."

Ian tossed Will a pointed look as if to say, "You know what I mean."

"Sure, okay," Will acquiesced. "I can agree with that. I can even believe that people can come into our lives for a reason. But most of those people are only meant to be temporary. People serve their purpose in our lives, and then we move on."

Ian nodded somberly. "Okay…. But what about the people who are meant to stay?" Will shrugged, nonchalant. "I think one day you're going to wake up and realize that life's gotten pretty damn lonely and that your revolving door of one-night stands and fuck buddies has lost its luster."

"Speak for yourself, Mr. Lonely Heart," Will joked, nudging Ian's shoulder with his own. "And even if that's true.... One, I don't think there's necessarily one perfect person out there for everyone. That's some bullshit cooked up by those ridiculous romantic comedies that chicks use to make men's lives miserable with their impossible expectations and mythical ideas of romance. And two, I plan on fully enjoying all life has to offer before or even if that day of lonely reckoning comes. At least I'm out there meeting people. You, on the other hand...."

"I meet people," Ian mumbled, defensive.

"How? You spend every weekend with your library card, a stack of  _Star_   _Trek_  DVDs, and Chinese take-out."

“It’s not my fault a  _Star_   _Trek_  marathon and a pint of Ben and Jerry's are infinitely more interesting than any offers I’ve had lately. And they come without risk of venereal disease.”

“You haven’t used your dick in so long, you’ve forgotten what it’s for.”

“I know it’s not where my brain resides, which is more than I can say for you.” Will shoved Ian so hard he almost fell off the bed. “Whoa, hey!” Ian shouted, flailing about, trying to regain his balance and keep from falling to the floor.

“Asshole,” Will muttered without heat.

"I’m just saying,” Ian began, resettling next to Will. “Sleeping my way through all the frat houses on campus isn’t going to help me find what I really want.”

“What do you really want then?”

Ian was quiet so long, Will thought he might have fallen asleep. “I have this vague memory from my childhood," Ian began with that tone, the one that said he was about to tell a story and, in effect, impart some rare insight into his hidden psyche. Will whipped his head toward Ian at the sudden mood shift. "I don't remember exactly how old I was or what I was doing, but I think I was at home because I remember having that feeling of safety and unself-consciousness that I only felt when I was with my family." Will watched Ian's profile with rapt attention. Ian stared at the ceiling, as if the images of his memory were playing out before him on a white screen. "Anyway," Ian cleared his throat, rubbing a hand through his messy hair. "I remember that I was outside, looking in the window. And inside, it was dark; there was only some lamplight or maybe even a fire going because it was cold outside and I was wearing a sweater. The curtains were open, and there was just enough light to see that people were moving around inside. And I saw my parents. They were laughing as they danced together." Will felt his mouth mirroring the small smile playing over Ian's lips at the memory. "And I remember...I don't know...just this feeling of awe and... _magic_. And I had this sudden epiphany, this...irrevocable revelation of what I wanted for my life. I knew that I wanted that, what I felt in that exact moment. And I decided that whatever I did in my life, wherever I went, I wanted someone there beside me, someone to share my life with. Someone to talk to and laugh with after the kids have gone to bed. Someone to dance barefoot in the kitchen with until we're old and both have arthritis in our hips."

A momentary silence settled between them, each absorbed in their own thoughts.

"I guess Agnes was right," Will sighed. "And we'll just have to elope before we ride off into the sunset together because, so far in this life, you're probably the only person I can stand to be around for more than a couple hours at a time."

"Oh, yeah?" Ian decided to play along, happy to remove the attention from himself before he embarrassed himself even more. "And what did Agnes say exactly?"

"She said that if I was going to ask anyone to run away with me, it'd be you," Will admitted readily.

Ian laughed. "And why would she say that?"

"Oh, come on. You know it's true. Agnes was always saying that I love you more than her."

"You do love me more than her."

"Well, we won't go into that," Will joked before they both dissolved into a fit of giggles.

Sobering once more, Ian took time to rearrange himself, slipping an arm under his head and putting his foot up on the wall above the headboard. "Me too. You're probably the best friend I've ever had."

"I know," Will said simply. "When you answered my ad for a roommate three years ago," Will mirrored Ian's body language, "I knew right away we'd be best buds."

"Bullshit," Ian snorted, nudging Will’s shoulder with his own.

"No, it's true."

"Is it because I resisted the temptation force my wicked way onto you after you insisted on walking around in those ridiculously tiny bikini briefs every morning at breakfast?"

"Force me?" Will snorted. "Oh, please. You get weepy when you run over a gecko with your bicycle tire. There's not a 'wicked' bone in your body."

"There is  _one_  wicked bone...," Ian breathed heavily in Will's ear.

"If you add 'in my pants,' I'm going to punch you," Will laughed, palming Ian's face and pushing it away from him. Ian slapped his hand away. "And what's with the nauseatingly lame innuendo? That's my one job in this relationship!"

Ian chuckled. "Because of that underwear, I thought for weeks that that girl you were with-- what was her name, Julie?-- was a beard."

Will barked out a laugh. "Oh, man. I think she thought so too when she met you. And saw that underwear. Actually...now that I think about it, that's probably why she broke up with me." Ian was laughing raucously now. "And you thought I liked wearing that dick-squeezing shit? That was totally for your benefit, pal. You were the most sexually frustrated gay guy I'd ever met. And I did musical theater! I thought I could at least give you some irresistible masturbatory fodder before you exploded all over our apartment. And you know, exploded gay guy is so hard on the upholstery."

Ian threw an arm over his eyes as he chuckled, embarrassed. "For a straight guy, you have an alarming amount of interest in my sex life," He mock-groused.

"That's what friends are for," Will shrugged, before smacking a pillow over Ian's face and holding it down. Ian's angry protests sounded small and muffled under the pillow. Ian shot out a hand and tickled Will's ribs, reducing Will to a flailing, squealing schoolgirl and allowing him to escape the smothering. "Besides," Will continued, now slightly breathless. "Do you know how many times I've gotten laid because I have a gay best friend? It's almost as good a bait as having a baby or a cute little puppy."

"Oh, I see. You've just been using me this whole time."

"Well, yeah. I thought you knew."

Ian smacked Will with the pillow. "Me too," Ian continued, suddenly serious. "I mean, I think I probably knew right away that we'd be friends. And before you say it again, it had nothing to do with your stupid, faggy underwear."

"Then what was it other than my devastating good looks and my great sense of humor?" Will batted his eyelashes.

"Well, that was part of it," Ian indulged with an insincere smirk. "You also had Arturo Sandoval and Radiohead and Patty Griffin and Rufus Wainwright all on your iPod the first time I went to your apartment."

"Is that all?" Will snorted. "You judged my music taste by its cover?"

"You also had Italo Calvino, Pablo Neruda, and an anthology of gay poetry on your bookshelves,  _and_  you'd written comments in the margins."

"That anthology was for a class. I would never buy that crap of my own free will."

"Oh, is that why you had a dozen or so pages earmarked with comments, like 'this is the shit, yo!' written next to a highlighted verse? Because you thought it was crap," Ian teased.

Will shook his head, both pleased and mortified. He could admit it. He was a guy. And gay or straight, guys could be inconsiderate, thoughtless a-holes. Hell, he was one of those a-holes. But Ian was one of those rare breed of guys who noticed the little things. It was not just that he remembered you had a birthday like everyone else or occasionally recalled that you had a deathly fear of clowns in order to emotionally blackmail you for his own gain. He would remember when you had a major exam and send you a good luck text right before class. He would hear you coughing through the bedroom wall during the night, then there would be a new package of throat lozenges sitting outside your bedroom door the next morning. You would mention in passing some old movie you liked, and he would tape it for you the next time it came on TV. He played the good sport as he listened to your Greatest Hits Friday Night Bar Stories for the tenth time. And he loved to laugh. Ian was the kind of guy that it was impossible not to like.

"Wow. You're such a slut," Will joked.

"So how did you know we were, uh, meant to be."

"Easy. You thought I was funny, and I'm an even bigger slut than you are." After a moment, he added, "And you didn't say that black and white movies are boring because they aren't in color." Ian smiled as Will threw an arm across Ian's chest, cuddling up to him. "I'm gonna miss you."

"Me too," Ian said glumly, placing a hand over Will's arm.

"Hey, what time is it," Will asked, sitting up, pulling out his phone, and flipping it open to check the clock before Ian could answer him. "It's not even midnight."

"What're you thinking?"

"If this really is our last hurrah before responsible adulthood beckons and we're living on opposites ends of the country, then we've got a lot of immaturity to cash in on tonight."

"As long as we don't end up in jail," Ian bargained.

"You always spoil the fun."


	2. The Accidental Husband

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's eleven years later, and Will and Ian must deal with the consequences of that long ago night in Vegas.

_Eleven Years Later..._

Will repressed a sigh as he lifted eyes to the sky and departed the doughnut shop. The morning sky was a bright orange, lemon, and plum sorbet, and cumulus clouds loomed large. It looked like rain. The coffee-flavored steam rose up from his Italian roast, perking him up a bit. The coffee was not as good as that one place Ben was always raving about. But he could never remember what it was called or where it was, and the doughnut shop coffee was always hot, strong, and convenient and tasted only slightly burnt. The autumn leaves were just beginning to fall, and the precipitous breeze took on sudden fervor, sending the flame-hued foliage dancing down the sidewalk as he made his way to the corner of the street toward his office building. A particularly large leaf hit him square in the chest. He glanced down to find a hot pink sheet of paper plastered against his shirtfront. Raising his head, he discovered himself enveloped in a swirling cyclone of brightly colored paper.

"I'm so sorry," a woman apologized, approaching him fast, arms loaded with similarly garish-hued parchment.

He grasped at the loose sheets flying about, snatching them from the air as they fluttered about in the wind and danced across the pavement. He managed to wrangle most of the paper before the rest were swept away in the torrent, too far and too fast to retrieve.

"Thank you so much," the woman said as she took the messy stack from his hands.

Her whole slender personhood looked a bit wind-blown-- blonde wisps of hair pulled loose from the knot at the back of her head, playing about in the wind. She looked to be in her early to mid-forties. Her smile was wide. Fine lines feathered out from bright green eyes, and a large, hooked nose stood out from her otherwise delicate, fine-boned features. She was a uniquely beautiful woman, Will could not help but notice as he peeled off another sheet of paper clinging to his pant leg. The woman uttered a surprised cry as her green scarf caught on the breeze and unwound from her neck, but Will quickly grasped it from the air and gently wound it back around her. The woman laughed a bit, embarrassed, as Will held out the last of the paper fliers to her. She put up her hand, refusing the paper.

"Keep it. I've got plenty."

Will looked down at the article in his hand. It was a flyer advertising "Latin Dance Night at El Tropicana." He'd been there once, to El Tropicana. It was on the trendier side of the dive restaurant-bars on the outskirts of the Arts District, before the establishments became strictly low end-- literally on the other side of the railroad tracks across the river-- the kind without a single matching chair, some even missing a front window, as the music drifted out of every open doorway, blending together with the cacophony of the heavy foot traffic, waiting pedicabs, and a plethora of food carts crowding the narrow streets. As per usual on that side of town, live bands played most nights at El Tropicana on a large rooftop patio lined with ancient, multi-colored string lights.

"I'm Karina. My studio hosts a Latin dance night on Wednesdays. During the first hour, we teach some basic steps from the cha-cha and the merengue to rumba, salsa, mambo."

"Oh, I, uh...thanks, but I'm not much of a dancer. My fiancée is more the dancing type."

"You should bring them," Karina persisted. "It'll make the one you love happy to know you're wandering from your comfort zone in order to try something they like. And you know what they say about a man who knows how to move on a dance floor," she teased as she stuffed the rest of her flyers in the large tote hanging from her shoulder.

"We both work late most week nights, anyway." Will held out the flyer once more.

"Well, maybe one day you'll find you aren't so busy," Karina replied, once again refusing the paper.

Will sighed and shoved the flyer into the open compartment of his shoulder bag. The woman smiled, pleased, and continued down the sidewalk as he crossed the street toward his building.

***

Will took a long sip of his quad campana. He raised the blinds over the windows that comprised the back wall of his office, looking out over the cityscape from his view at the top of the converted warehouse, as the morning sun echoed among the glass and concrete of the downtown skyrises, glanced off the river that cut right through the heart of the city, and was pocketed in the lush green bowls of city parks and suburban hillsides elbowing their way amongst the infrastructure. The sunlight flooding the space helped to rouse him from the last vestiges of sleep that a morning commute could not and lessened the claustrophobia of days with too many long hours spent in-doors. He liked to enjoy his morning coffee as he looked out over a city he likened to himself in many ways-- the scaffolding of numerous buildings under construction were his bones, the river and the narrow roads and numerous bike paths winding among the hillsides, his veins. He had built himself into the heart of the city and saw himself as an old man someday, likened to a long-standing historic structure, obstinately unchanged and remaining, no matter how it clashed among whatever modern architecture would inevitably come and go. It made him feel stable and enduring if not a bit lonesome.

Will sat at his desk and launched his desktop schedule. He was adding notes about the next staff meeting, when a knock sounded at his open office door. He looked up to find Benjamin Wylde-- brother-in-law, business partner, and friend all rolled into one-- standing in the doorway, looking as if he was about to explode.

"What's up? Why do you have that look on your face? If you're here to badger me on my sister's behalf on why I haven't been to the house for dinner in over a month, you can turn right around," Will warned.

"We got it," he burst out. "We got the Brown and Barli project. They just called to say they've accepted our design."

"We got it," Will repeated doubtfully.

Will sat there motionless. Stunned. They'd spent the last six months working on their design and pitch for the Brown and Barli Urban Development Foundation. He had been thrilled and flabbergasted when they had been approached by the BBF board of directors to submit a full proposal based on an initial rough design, after previous contracts with another overseas firm had fallen through three years into construction. He did not think their comparatively modest design company would be chosen for such a competitive and highly sought-after account, particularly when they were up against much larger, more established, and internationally recognized companies. When he and Ben had relocated from Houston and partnered up seven years ago and put in every last cent of their savings, assets, and collateral to start their own landscape design firm, they had struggled for the first few years before achieving even modest success. Will had even lived with Ben and his sister and their new baby for those first few years. Even though they had grown more in the last few years than they had once thought possible, this was the kind of project he had been dreaming of, the kind of project that would put their company on the map and not only open them up to the most competitive projects anywhere in the country but firmly place them in contention in the international market.

Will whooped and jumped out of his chair, ran around his desk, and grabbed Ben around the waist, lifting him in the air and spinning him around. They hollered and cheered until the designers on the floor were compelled to leave their workstations and gather around Will's glassed-in cubical of an office to find out what all the commotion was about.

"We got the Brown and Barli project," Will announced.

Cheers and joyful pandemonium erupted throughout the entire office. Everyone knew what this would mean for all of them-- ever more vacillating periods of long hours and a heavy workload for the next eighteen months in exchange for a career-making opportunity.

"I've gotta call Marin," he told Ben. "Thank her and ask her if she wants to go out and celebrate with all of us tonight."

"Oh, that reminds me. The Burkhardt Group is managing the construction of the project, so we need to schedule a meeting with them for next week."

"I'll call them myself before lunch," Will promised.

"Give my best regards to Marin Martin." Ben bowed formally, putting on his most ridiculous and pretentious English accent. "I'm going to tell Junie the good news!" He turned and clicked his heels in the air before jogging back to his office.

***

"We got the job," Will exhaled as soon as his call was answered. He could practically hear Marin smiling smugly into the phone before she even spoke.

"I told you so."

"I know you did, baby. You've always believed in me and the dreams I've had for this company. We never would have landed this project without you, and I know I could never thank you enough," he effused.

"Your everlasting devotion will have to suffice," Marin intoned magnanimously. "And perhaps a diamond or two." She laughed at herself.

Will smiled. "Done and done."

"Now I hate to have to tell you that I'll be home late tonight and miss all the celebrating," she pouted. "I have a client meeting masquerading as yet another business dinner."

"That's too bad. Kevin will be beside himself," he teased.

"I'm sure," she snorted. "Actually, I'm glad you called, sweetheart. I had a little chat with Marcus today. He told me that you're ignoring him."

"Oh, shit. In all the commotion, I forgot to call him back."

"No worries," Marin placated, amused. "He's coming by your office today around lunch. I told him you'd be there, of course, since you can hardly be found anywhere else. It must be something very important for him to drive halfway across town in midday traffic to see you."

"I can hear the suspicion dripping from your voice," Will accused good-naturedly. "And before you can ask, no, I don't know what it's about." There was a pause on the other end of the line, and Will could practically see the wheels turning in Marin's head.

"All right," she capitulated. "You can tell me about it later when I get home from this wretched dinner. I'm so sorry I won't be able to celebrate with you and Ben and the others tonight."

"Hey," Will soothed. "You put up with my long hours, and you know that I know your work is every bit as important as mine. We can have our own private celebration later," He lowered his voice suggestively. "And at least now you won't have to pretend Kevin doesn't incite you to homicidal urges."

Marin snorted. "He may be a genius designer, but that man is a disgusting pig."

"I'll be sure to give him your best regards, then," Will chuckled.

"Love you, darling.”

"Love you too. See you tonight."

***       

Several harried hours had passed by the time Will could even take a moment to breathe. He had just hung up with an associate at Burkhardt when his office door opened and Marcus Underwood stepped inside. Marcus always looked GQ ready in his designer suits, and he walked with the easy confidence of the attractive, respected, and successful man that he was. Today was no different. The burnt apricot of his dress shirt looked practically delectable against his dark skin and complemented the charcoal silk of his jacket and the chocolate leather of his dress shoes. Will had often said that Marcus was a guy who could class up any joint. And no matter what he was wearing, he never seemed over or underdressed.

"Is it lunch already," Will asked, surprised.

"Lunch has come and gone, my friend. Luckily for you, I'm feeling particularly generous today," Marcus quipped, holding up a bag of carry-out from The Magnolia, a trendy local bistro that served spicy fried avocado and slaw tacos that Will ordered to-go as many as three times a week.

"First you descend from your throne on the other side of town, and now you're bribing me with tacos. Am I being sued or something?"

Marcus waved a hand, moving around the chairs across from Will's desk to sit down on the sofa by the windows, and crossed his legs, getting comfortable before replying. "It's nothing like that. I was already on this side of town for a meeting, and thought I'd stop by since you're ignoring my calls."

"So what's with the food and the persistence?"

"Well, if you'd bothered to answer my calls.... You know, you really ought to thank me."

"Thank you," Will mouthed around a gigantic bite of taco.

"Not just for dinner but for keeping Marin off the warpath."

"And whose blood would she be sniffing out?"

"Yours."

"Mine? What did I do?" Will was confounded, but Marcus smiled evilly, letting the panic set in.

"Well," he drawled, smoothing his tie in the special kind of affected nonchalant way of his that belied that he was about to impart some particularly juicy information.

"God, David's right. Now that I'm on the receiving end, it's insufferable when you do that."

"You leave my husband out of this," Marcus issued a heatless warning. "I'm trying to extract the maximum amount of enjoyment from this. It's the most exciting thing to happen to either of us all week."

"We got the Brown and Barli account," Will announced.

"Some might consider this to be bigger than that."

"Jeez. I'm almost afraid to ask. What could possibly be bigger than a once-in-a-lifetime, career-making opportunity?"

"Indeed," Marcus smirked. "So, I was digging through your financial records and such, putting the final touches on your prenup, when I stumbled across some rather interesting information." Will waited, feigning patience. Marcus laughed mischievously, shaking his head in amazement. "Honestly, Will, I didn't think you had it in you."

Now Will was really confounded. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Marcus extracted a single sheet of paper from his briefcase and made his unhurried way to Will's desk. "I'm talking about the fact that you're already married," Marcus finally answered, sliding the paper in front of Will, who sat there speechless, holding the remains of his dinner away from the offending document as if it might reach out to bite him. "For the last ten years or so. To a man, I might add. I admit that last little bit of information shocked the hell out of me," Marcus said, sounding rather...un-shocked. Now Marcus's six "urgent" voicemails to his cell and office in half as many days made sense.

Will looked down his nose at the single white sheet of paper, a blight among all the artifacts and documents on his crowded desk. It was a copy of a court record for a marriage license issued to a William Sylvian Bloom and an Ian Gabriel Santiago Alvarez Carlisle by the state of Nevada. Marcus studied Will with a laser eye as Will sat there, staring unblinking down at the thing before him, his expression all but neutral except for his slightly flared nose wings and the now noticeable pulse point at the side of his throat.

"Holy shit," Will deflated, tossing the remains of his dinner in the trash, his appetite gone. "I...Oh, man." He laughed mirthlessly and scrubbed his face with his hands. "I suppose I have some 'splaining to do."

Marcus lifted a single eyebrow as if to say, "No kidding." He settled into a chair across from Will's desk and laced his manicured hands together over his crossed knee, waiting patiently as Will frantically decided on whatever version of events he was going to tell that had led them up to this precise moment. Will sat back in his office chair and looked out toward the orange October skyline, as if preparing himself for a lengthy tale.

"There's not much to tell, really. We were a couple of stupid undergrads on our first trip to Sin City, blowing off some steam between final exams and the looming responsibilities of adulthood. We got a little wasted-- or a lot wasted-- and as a couple of young, drunk assholes are wont to do, immediately followed with even more bad decision-making. We went to one of those drive-through wedding chapels they used to have. Remember those? Anyone with one eye and a working nose could tell we were drunk and stoned off our asses. But it was...oh my god, it was just a joke! I had no idea it was a real marriage!"

"Good thing we discovered this now before you made a bigamist of yourself," Marcus supplied, garnishing far too much enjoyment from Will's burgeoning panic.

"Oh, my god. Mar," Will breathed, as if he finally remembered he had a fiancée, who might be less than thrilled to discover her betrothed was already married. "Oh, man." He exhaled, slumping down farther into his chair. "I was already going to pick up some thank-you-for-saving-my-ass jewelry for Marin tonight. Now I'm thinking I'm going to need to add a please-don't-dump-my-ass bouquet."

"It's going to take more than a few flowers to save you. Maybe a nice pair of earrings to go along with the necklace," Marcus advised teasingly.

"What about an annulment?"

"You haven't even married the girl yet!" Will gave him a look that told Marcus he was in no mood. "Just kidding. And you're about ten years and four months too late for that. But I take it that you'll be interested in a hasty divorce then?"

"Just tell me where to sign."

"Hmm. I thought you might. My office has already started drawing up some preliminary dissolution papers. We can have them ready to file and delivered to Mr. Carlisle's lawyer's office as soon as next week."

"I don't even know where he is. I haven't seen him in eight years."

"I also took the liberty of tracking down your husband...." Will shot Marcus a warning glare. "Uh, Mr. Carlisle," Marcus corrected. "Turns out he lives right here in town."

"You're kidding." He leaned forward with renewed energy. "I forgot that his family used to live around here. We could have passed each other on the street a dozen times and never known it." Will seemed to lose himself in thought at his own suggestion.

"Turns out your taste in men is as good as your taste in women." Marcus pulled a few more sheets of paper from his briefcase and laid them on the desk. "I started with a basic Google search and found quite a bit of information. He's worked as a freelance writer in Washington, New York, Louisiana, Oregon, California.... He's had articles published in The New Yorker, The Huffington Post, The Advocate, The Smithsonian, and the New York Times.... He won an O. Henry Award. Pretty impressive.... He's most recently worked as an adjunct professor at a couple local universities for the last couple years...."

Will looked over the papers as Marcus spoke, his attention fading in and out. He stopped on a couple of photos of Ian smiling up at him from the grainy Internet printout. The same hazel-green eyes, medium brown hair, and pronounced Spanish nose he remembered. One picture looked as if it had been blown up from one accompanying a magazine article. He was smiling broadly, the crows feet spreading out from the corners of his eyes, the growing beard on his jaw making the cleft in his chin more pronounced. His eyes were squinted, head down, running a hand through his hair, as if someone had just said something that made him laugh and embarrassed him at the same time. Still with that hair that won't stay put, Will thought, noticing the finger-length waves and how they looked eternally ravaged by nervous fingers. And that made him feel better, for some reason, as if Ian could not possibly be a complete stranger to him now, since he still had that unkempt hair he could not stop running his fingers through. And now that he had put it that way, it seemed a pathetic thought.

Ian looked just the same yet different. Perhaps it was a contribution to growing older, losing some of the self-consciousness of youth for the self-assurance of age. He looked good. Better than he remembered, if Will was being honest. He looked so vital and alive, barely able to be contained by a mere photograph. He looked...happy. God, how the hell did he know whether or not he was happy? Perhaps he was just projecting his own hopes for Ian's happiness onto him as a way to assuage his own guilt for abandoning his friend. Will felt simultaneously heavy and hollow and suddenly so full of regret that he had to resist the urge to rub at the potent ache in his chest.

"...Plus, I admit to wanting to get a look at this big, dark secret in your past," Marcus continued, oblivious to Will's lack of attention.

"Stop making it out to be some deliberate deception on my part," Will snapped, finally looking up.

Marcus held up his hands conciliatory. "I implied no such thing. But, Will," Marcus pinned him with a stare. "What do you think everyone's going to think when you tell them?"

Will groaned, massaging his temples with one hand. "I wish there were a way around having to tell anyone anything. God, what a shit storm that's gonna be." He brought his hand down heavily against the top of his desk and sighed. "How long do you think this divorce will take?"

"Mr. Carlisle has twenty days to respond once the original petition for divorce has been filed with the court. It'll take sixty days for the divorce to finalize once the final papers have been filed. If the divorce agreements go uncontested, you could be a divorced man in just a few months. However, because Texas is a no-fault state, Mr. Carlisle could be entitled to fifty percent of your assets. If he decides to contest the divorce or attempts to lay claim to his share of your assets, he could cause a lot of trouble for you. He could even put Wylde Bloom at risk."

"No," Will shook his head adamantly. "Ian's not like that."

Marcus looked doubtful. "Nevertheless. It can't hurt to be prepared. The fact that you've been estranged for the majority of your marriage and, indeed, did not even realize you were legally married will benefit our case in court should it come to that. I'll let you know when we hear from Mr. Carlisle's lawyer."

"Actually, I'd like to speak with Ian first, if you don't mind. I have no idea what I'm gonna tell him, but it seems like the right thing to do. Eight years is a long time."

"Of course," Marcus agreed, a private smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"And I'd like to hold off on telling Marin or my family about my sham marriage until I can talk with Ian and we can file the papers. So don't go blabbing about this to anyone." Will pointed a censuring finger.

"Whatever you say. Chock it up to attorney-client privilege, shall we?" Marcus stood over the desk and picked up the photo printout of Ian. "But there is something about him, isn't there? A  _magnetism_." Marcus filled up his mouth with the word, making it sound even more weighted and grand that it was. "It's a shame really, a good looking man like that married to someone who can't even appreciate him." Marcus cocked his head slyly. "Or maybe you did, hmm? Maybe you've been holding out on us all these years. Would've made my life a hell of a lot easier. Do you know how many men I've had to turn down on your behalf? Gregory at the firm has been praying for sign from you for ye...."

Will snatched the paper from Marcus, who raised an eyebrow in baffled amusement. "Thanks for all of this, Marcus. Now get the hell out of my office."

The other man laughed, unoffended, as he shut the door behind himself, leaving Will to marinate in his thoughts.

***

It took Will nearly two weeks to build up the courage to make the phone call. His heart was about ready to pound through his chest as he punched the ten digits into the keypad. His hands were sweating so much, he had to switch the phone set back and forth, wiping his moist palms against his pant legs. He held his breath, willing the other end to go unanswered.

***

"Hello," Ian answered, juggling his cell phone, a laptop case, a stack of papers, and a half-eaten apple in his arms as he walked up the sidewalk toward the language building at Lake Hills College.

"Hey, you," a familiar voice replied.

"Hey, yourself," Ian smiled.

"Babe...."  _Uh-oh._ That tone of voice that implied he was not going to like what happened next. "I hate to cancel our plans on such short notice, but I have a meeting with a new client this afternoon. There's a last minute budget meeting before then, and.... Well, I won't bore you with the details, but it looks like I'll be working through lunch today."

"Oh." Ian stopped in his tracks, swallowing his disappointment. "Uh...no, that's all right. I have papers to grade, and Esme's been trying to get me to go with her to some Indian vegan place. Maybe I'll give her a call."

"Thanks for being so understanding."

"What’re ya gonna do," Ian shrugged. "Are we still on for that thing this weekend?"

"Absolutely. Wouldn't miss it," Christian promised. "And...," he paused to build suspense. "I come with a peace offering. My new clients are major donors to The Modern, and they've given me two tickets to a private showing of the new Kara Walker exhibit before it opens to the public. There will also be a symposium on queer people of color in art in America or something. Oh, and Maria Frida and Lorenco Marques will be part of an artist panel." It was like dangling a rainbow carrot in front of a gay horse, and Christian's tone implied as much. "It sounded like something you'd be interested in."

Ian smiled begrudgingly. "You thought right."

Damn him and his peace offerings. Christian knew he loved Kara Walker. And Maria Frida! Her  _Losing You_  series practically changed his life the first time he saw it almost fifteen years ago. The photographer was nearly seventy now and increasingly reclusive in the last ten years. He may never have another opportunity to hear her speak about her own work in person. Christian was a master at keeping his lovers happy, following the sting of each disappointment with a pitch perfect gesture that made it impossible for Ian to remain angry with him.

"All right then." The sound of victory was in Christian's voice. "I'll talk to you later."

"Bye."

"Goodbye."

Thirty seconds later, the phone rang again.

"If you've called me back to cancel again, Christian, I swear to god...."

"Uh...."

_Oops. Not Christian._

"Hello?" No answer. "Who is this?" Ian could hear breathing on the other end of the line. "I can hear you breathing, you know." More loud breathing. "It sounds like a deviated septum. My father had one of those." The mystery breather cleared his throat.  _Bingo_. "Snored like a grizzly bear, nearly destroyed my parents' marriage...." Weak laughter greeted him at the other end. Then more clearing of a throat.

"Ian," the voice said. Not as a question, as in “Is this the Ian I'm looking for? Do I have the right number?” But  _Ian_ , as a statement, almost intimate and familiar.

Ian was not sure why, but it made his stomach flutter. Maybe he should have answered affirmatively, he thought. But instead, he waited for the voice to speak again.

"God, where do I start? You're probably wondering why I'm even calling you after all these years."

Ian's stomach dropped, as if the little jostle of the elevator as it settled on his floor was suddenly a cut cable after all.

"Will." The name was spoken quietly, as if disbelief made a louder utterance inappropriate. It felt so surreal to even speak the name after so many years. The silence before Will's next words was near-oppressive in its weight.

"Yeah...um," Will's voice sounded thick. "You'll never believe it, but we're in the same city again."  _God, what an awkward, terrible way to start this conversation._   _Maybe I should have thought this through more._  Except he had barely thought about anything else for two weeks.

"No, I know," Ian said. "My sister told me." _Ugh, why did I say that?_

"Your sister?"

"Esme. Her ex-partner is Victoria Grant, the curator of the Nierman Gallery. You helped design their sculpture garden or something."

"Oh," was all Will could think to say.

That had been at least three years ago. Ian had known, and he had never tried to contact him. Will's disappointment was swift and deep, and it surprised him. Suddenly, it was as if the pavement had risen up from under him to smack him in the face, and Will had never been more sorry in his life. This was his fault. He knew he took the lion's share of blame in their drifting apart. God, he had been such an asshole! Ian had held on for years of one excuse after another. He was too busy to visit. Then he was even too busy to call. And then he stopped returning Ian's phone calls all together until Ian finally gave up. The last time he had seen Ian, Ian had spent money he did not have to fly out to California to visit him and then spent the majority of the time in Will's apartment by himself.

"I'm so sorry," Will choked. His voice sounded quivery and raw. "I'm more sorry than I can ever say."  _God, get ahold of yourself, Will_. He had not cried in years, and now he had nearly broke down twice today.

"Whoa. Hey, it's okay, man. It was a long time ago." Ian was not certain it was okay, but he was willing to say anything to cut this awkward to end all awkward conversations short.

"It's something I should've said a long time ago. I was such a selfish asshole, and I'm so sorry."

Ian felt a sudden swell of anger and a burning sensation at the back of his throat. He swallowed against the rising bile.  _What the hell?_  He'd washed his hands of Will Bloom a long damn time ago. So why did that apology mean anything at all to him now? He shook his head, as if Will could actually see it over the phone.

"Okay."  _Okay? How stupid._  But what else could he say?  _No, you're not forgiven? Fuck you, asshole, for abandoning me?_

"Okay?" Will sounded unsure.

"Yeah," Ian shrugged. "Okay."

"O-okay.... Um, listen, there's a reason I called...."  _No shit._  One doesn't call without a reason, especially not after the better part of a decade. But Ian could not even fathom what the reason could be. Continually reticent and nervous, Will finally managed, "Do you think you'd be free to meet me for coffee...or something...sometime?" The words tumbled and tangled in burst out of Will's mouth.

"Uh...." Will was asking him out for coffee? And do what? Catch up like a couple of old college buddies? Well, that was what they were. So why did it feel like more than that? Because he had been betrayed and abandoned, that's why. Will had dumped him, cut him out of his life. He should just tell Will no and goodbye and be done with it. Will was a part of his past. A past he did not want to revisit.

"There's something I'd like to speak with you about. It's important."

Ian was utterly perplexed. What could Will possibly have to say, all of a sudden, after all these years? What could he possibly want? Not to take up where they left off after eight years, certainly. That was too much to expect. But now that Ian had allowed himself such a thought, the fluttering in his belly told him he did not feel as opposed to the idea as he perhaps thought he should. No, he could not. Too much time had passed. Letting Will back in his life now would be too disruptive. He should forgive and then forget, as they say. He would let Will say his piece and be done with it.

"Sure." Wait. Had he meant to say that?

"Can you meet me today?"  _Whoa_. This was going a little fast. He had not even had time to recover from the phone call.

"Uh...." God, he was so eloquent. But what to do? "Actually, my lunch hour just opened up," Ian admitted.  _Shit_. He definitely had not meant to say that. He was such a terrible liar when put on the spot. The truth just came tumbling out, completely unbidden.

"I can meet you at one," Will was saying, sounding grateful. "At Café Avoca. Do you know it?"

"Yeah...." Well, he did know it. They had the best coffee in town.

"Great. I'll see you then. Um...thank you."

And then he was gone. What the heck had just happened? Ian pulled his phone away from his face and looked down at it accusingly, as if to say it was all his phone's fault. Why did it pick up? How could it let him get into this mess? Why couldn't a call fail when you needed one? And then he realized he was standing on a public walkway outside his workplace, having an audible argument with a cell phone, and walked hurriedly inside.

***

Ian had been sitting at the table for fifteen minutes trying to calm himself down. He had been a nervous wreck all morning. He had cut his conference period short because he was absolutely useless just sitting about at his desk praying for some act of god to get him out of this. He considered driving home to change his clothes. He could have just called and said that something came up. But no, for some reason, he could not lie. And before he knew it, he was dodging co-workers and students and jogging to his car well before the time he actually needed to leave.

Café Avoca was a small downtown cafe that catered to the college and club crowd the last four days of the week, when they stayed open for twenty-four hours and served breakfast all day long. It was small and congested inside, though sleekly arranged in an industrial style, with small high tables and stools set amongst the black laminate, bare wood, and chrome. Most of the seating was outside on an expansive patio that had been added some years ago. But it was a chilly day, and so he had taken a table for two by the front windows so he could watch for Will when he arrived. He had ordered an herbal tea-- to the gratitude of his churning stomach-- and thought back on the day his sister had called him with the name of Will Bloom on her lips. Esme had recognized the name when her ex-partner, Tori, had told her the designer from the landscape firm they had chosen to design their new permanent sculpture exhibit in the exterior courtyard. No "hello" or "how do you do" from Esme. Nope. That was not her style. Always direct and to the point with that one. Just "William Bloom. Do you remember him?" when he had picked up the phone and then nearly dropped it at the near-assault of having that name thrown at him out of the blue.

But Will was more than just a designer. He was the damn owner. Wylde Bloom. His name was on the logo and the business cards. Ian had googled him that night. He had been impressed with the work Will's firm had done. He had even seen some of them in person. Wylde Bloom had co-designed the perennial gardens on the roof of the Poirot Natural Science and History Museum as well as the Brook White AIDS Memorial for the Nelson White Resource Center, the second largest LGBT support organization in the country. The design had received national attention a few years ago when the memorial had been unveiled to the public. Thousands of hand-painted tiles-- designed in memory of loved ones who had died of AIDS-- had been collected from all over the world, by people from AIDS activist Spencer Cox to the children of the Kaguri School, a South African school for children orphaned by AIDS. The tiles had been arranged along a walkway that cut through the memorial garden. It was the city's own, permanent AIDS Memorial quilt. The memorial also included an art wall-- a revolving collection of AIDS activism art designed by both local children and internationally recognized artists. He recalled how the memorial had affected him when he had first seen it. It had seemed so much more significant then, to find out that someone with whom he had once been so close had been behind it. He had then searched out a current photo of Will on his company website. It had felt unholy strange to be looking at a photo of his old friend on a computer in the dark, wearing a tattered university shirt and eating Cheerios for dinner. He had surreptitiously looked around his apartment then, as if someone might be spying on him in such a sad display, and had felt utterly foolish to be so paranoid.

Ian had been staring into his cup for god knew how long, letting the steam rising up from the hot tea hypnotize him into a daze, as if the pale fluid were a crystal ball reflecting back to him the images from his past. He looked up then, clearing his mind's eye, to see Will walking up to the front doors of the cafe. Ian sat up straighter, trying to arrange himself in an approachable way, perhaps impress him with his good posture?  _Ugh_. He was hopeless.

Will's head was down, dark brown hair whipped about by the wind, his brow creased in thought. He walked differently, Ian was surprised to notice right away. Less unspent nervous energy and more easy confidence. It suited him. He had dressed down in jeans, a knit pullover, and a sport coat. He had bulked up his lean runners build a bit since he had last seen him. He looked good. Even better than his picture. Will immediately spotted Ian across the little cafe and smiled a smile that reached his eyes, now much-lined by time, but seemed to constrict around his mouth in self-conscious nerves. Ian could not have said why, but all of those unfamiliar, little lines spreading out from the corners of Will's eyes filled Ian with a curiously potent though fleeting anguish. Ian stood up from the table, palms rubbing nervously against his pant legs. He held out his hand as Will approached the table, uncertain of what else to do.

It was a long walk from the door to that little table, like a slow motion montage with music swelling, but unfortunately with a lot less  _An Affair to Remember_  romantic nostalgia and a little too much  _Jaws_  terrified anticipation. Will let a full smile burst forth as he took the hand Ian offered and used it to pull him into a hug. Ian barely had time to think about returning the gesture before Will patted him twice on the back and released him. The awkward hug and generic buddy pat was almost as depressing as the pathetic handshake Ian had offered. They sat down, trying to make friendly faces at one another-- but only coming out awkward-- for agonizing seconds until the black-clad waiter-- sporting two-inch gauges, a purple faux-hawk, and a neck tattoo-- approached the table to take their lunch order. Will felt free to observe his lunch companion while his attention was on the menu in front of him. Will fought the urge to fidget in his seat as he looked over the menu.

"Ben is always bringing me coffee from here, but I've never actually been in this place." Had he, they just might have crossed paths sooner. Ian carded his hands through his hair, and Will smiled at the familiar gesture.

Ian ordered the spinach crepes with hollandaise and a dark roast coffee, and Will ordered the same. It was the same thing Ian always ordered from there. But he could feel Will's eyes on him as something palpable, and he suddenly could not remember what he was supposed to be doing with the plastic coated paper in front of him. Giving back his the menu to the waiter, Ian looked up to find Will with a strange half-smile directed at him.

"What?"

"Nothing," Will shrugged. "Just some things never change, is all."

Ian had no idea what to say to that, and so merely sat there looking expectant, hoping that would move things along.

"This is weird, right?" Will smiled nervously.

"Unbearably so," Ian nodded, chuckling self-consciously into his coffee.

"So, Uh...," Will fumbled. "You're probably wondering why I just called you out of the blue after eight years wanting to see you."

"Pretty much," Ian agreed, eyes taking in Will intently now.

Will coughed and dropped his eyes to his hands around the coffee cup that had appeared from nowhere, grateful to have something to do with his hands. "I honestly don't know where to start." Ian waited. "So, I guess I'll just come out with it."

"Okay." Ian quickly sat back, realizing he had been leaning slowly forward in anticipation until he was practically bent completely over the table. He leaned far back in his chair and extended one leg, hoping that if he appeared to be relaxed, he might make it so. But then his foot bumped the table leg, and the momentary panic of thinking it might have been Will's foot caused him to curl up around his coffee cup once more.

"Um, do you remember that trip we took to Vegas before graduation?"

Ian started for a moment. That was so far from what he had been expecting Will to say, he almost forgot it was his turn to speak. "Uh, yeah," he nodded, his confusion clear on his face. "What about it?"

"Uh, well...." Will cleared his throat, a terrible nervous habit he had not recognized in himself before. "Do you remember what happened that last night?" Ian stared silently, a strange plethora of veiled and shifting emotions playing across his features. He waited so long to reply, Will began to fidget in earnest.

"A lot happened that night," Ian prevaricated, mirroring Will's posture with both hands wrapped protectively around his own coffee cup.

"Yeah, but I mean," Will huffed out a sigh, impatient with himself. "Do you remember that other graduation present I gave you?"

"Yeah...," Ian drew out, clearly waiting for Will to finish.

"We got pretty wasted that night."

"I remember."

God, he was acting like he was falling apart, and Ian seemed so calm. Will cleared his throat yet again before meeting Ian's eyes once more. "Do you remember anything after that?"

Ian's patience was wavering. "What is this about, Will? You call me up after nearly a decade of silence to what? Reminisce about some time we got high together when we were stupid kids?"

Will sighed deeply and rubbed a hand over his face. "No, I'm sorry, it's just...it's just so surreal and awkward to be here telling you this...," he stammered. "We're married." There, he had said it, and then he almost laughed at the look of utter surprised confusion washing over Ian's face.

Then Ian allowed a smile to leak out around his mouth. "Oh, right. Yeah, I remember that. We drove through that ridiculous drive-through wedding chapel. God, I could barely stand up straight." Ian seemed relieved to have a tangible train of thought to hold onto.

"Well, here's the thing."  _Jesus, here goes._ "What we thought of as a joke at the time, turned out to be a bit more legally binding that we originally thought."

"What are you talking about?" All relief vanished from Ian's face. "We just drove up to a chapel and ordered a wedding like a happy meal at McDonald's. It's not like we went down to the courthouse and signed any official documents."

"Well, we did sign one. And as it turns out, it was pretty official."

Will pulled out the folded marriage record from his pants pocket, unfolded it, and placed it on the table between them. Ian cast Will a doubtful glance, rubbing at his stubbled jaw, before he picked up the document and scanned its contents. Will watched Ian's head twitch and his eyes grow more intent as realization seeped in.

"Holy shit," Ian swore. "You mean that wedding was real?" He looked up then, eyes round.

Will snorted ruefully. "That's exactly what I said. And it looks that way."

"We were married. For real."

"Still married actually, seeing as we never got a divorce."

"Oh, my god," Ian covered his mouth and then began laughing hysterically, drawing glances from other cafe patrons. When he caught his breath, he sat back in his seat. Stupefied. And Will had a flickering flashback to a Vegas cantina from eleven years ago. "I'm kinda speechless here."

"I don't blame you. So was I."

"Why now? After all this time," Ian asked, dropping his voice a little and leaning farther over the table. "Why are we just now finding out about this?"

 _Why, indeed._  Will felt nervous all over again. "We might never have been the wiser if my lawyer hadn’t dug it up when he was putting together my financial records for a prenup," Will explained, holding his coffee cup to his lips as he finally took a sip, seeming to remember that he had ordered the drink for more than just a decoration for his idyll hands.

"A prenup." Ian sounded full of friendly interest, but inside, his stomach sank. He did not know why. He should have felt neutral or even happy for Will, but he just felt...glum.

"Yeah," Will swallowed. "I'm getting married," he said with a feigned excitement he just did not feel at the moment.

It had nothing to do with the girl, Will thought. She was wonderful. Any man would be so lucky to be able to call Marin Martin his own. Marin Martin was a marketing exec-- a managing director of the design department at her advertising firm on the fast track to success. She had helped make Will's dream for his company into the success it had become in the last few years by helping them launch their in-house marketing team and making Wylde Bloom visible to a broader market. What had begun as a professional relationship of gratitude and mutual respect between William Bloom and Marin Martin had bloomed, so to speak, into love. Will found himself explaining all of this out loud to Ian as proof of his own devotion, but damn if the timing could not have been more off. He would be planning a wedding, getting a divorce, and working on the largest project his company had ever attempted. Suddenly, Will found it difficult to breathe or swallow. The waiter had arrived with their food, and Will began to down the entire carafe of water he had snatched from the waiter's hands. The waiter raised an incredulous eyebrow but then shrugged and moved to his next table.

"Wow," Ian said, watching Will frantically refill his water glass. He could not think of what else to say. What did people normally say to news like this?  _It's about time? When's the baby due?_  That did not seem appropriate. "I have to say, I'm surprised," Ian admitted. "You were always the one saying the whole marriage and family thing was not for you. Who'd have thought you'd be the one to get married first." And now that he had said it, Ian felt a sting of dissatisfaction so sudden and consuming, he wanted to curl up in bed with his Netflix account and box of Mallomars. For a moment, he felt fairly old and pathetic. This must be what the spinster bridesmaid felt like.

Of course, Will knew that Ian was not married, or it would have been him being served the divorce papers. But the fact that Ian-- sweet and thoughtful Ian, who had always wanted the relationship instead of the one-night stand, who had wanted the husband and the dog and the house and the two-point-five children, who saw what his parents had together and always thought he would have the same thing someday-- was still walking alone in the world made the world seem that much more cruel and unfair a place.

"You were always the kind to believe in true love and the right one and all that bullhockey."

An indecipherable look passed over Ian's face before he said, "I still believe in all that crap, as you call it. Maybe I just haven't been willing to settle for less than what I want, like some people are willing to do."

Will's jaw sharpened as he thought there might have been an unuttered touché there, but he decided to let the comment slide. Too many people did end up settling for something less than what they wanted. Usually, they immediately ended up with less than they deserved. His mother certainly had, and he had spent the last thirty-odd years trying to avoid the same mistake.

**Chapter 1: The Accidental Husband**

_Eleven Years Later..._

Will repressed a sigh as he lifted eyes to the sky and departed the doughnut shop. The morning sky was a bright orange, lemon, and plum sorbet, and cumulus clouds loomed large. It looked like rain. The coffee-flavored steam rose up from his Italian roast, perking him up a bit. The coffee was not as good as that one place Ben was always raving about. But he could never remember what it was called or where it was, and the doughnut shop coffee was always hot, strong, and convenient and tasted only slightly burnt. The autumn leaves were just beginning to fall, and the precipitous breeze took on sudden fervor, sending the flame-hued foliage dancing down the sidewalk as he made his way to the corner of the street toward his office building. A particularly large leaf hit him square in the chest. He glanced down to find a hot pink sheet of paper plastered against his shirtfront. Raising his head, he discovered himself enveloped in a swirling cyclone of brightly colored paper.

"I'm so sorry," a woman apologized, approaching him fast, arms loaded with similarly garish-hued parchment.

He grasped at the loose sheets flying about, snatching them from the air as they fluttered about in the wind and danced across the pavement. He managed to wrangle most of the paper before the rest were swept away in the torrent, too far and too fast to retrieve.

"Thank you so much," the woman said as she took the messy stack from his hands.

Her whole slender personhood looked a bit wind-blown-- blonde wisps of hair pulled loose from the knot at the back of her head, playing about in the wind. She looked to be in her early to mid-forties. Her smile was wide. Fine lines feathered out from bright green eyes, and a large, hooked nose stood out from her otherwise delicate, fine-boned features. She was a uniquely beautiful woman, Will could not help but notice as he peeled off another sheet of paper clinging to his pant leg. The woman uttered a surprised cry as her green scarf caught on the breeze and unwound from her neck, but Will quickly grasped it from the air and gently wound it back around her. The woman laughed a bit, embarrassed, as Will held out the last of the paper fliers to her. She put up her hand, refusing the paper.

"Keep it. I've got plenty."

Will looked down at the article in his hand. It was a flyer advertising "Latin Dance Night at El Tropicana." He'd been there once, to El Tropicana. It was on the trendier side of the dive restaurant-bars on the outskirts of the Arts District, before the establishments became strictly low end-- literally on the other side of the railroad tracks across the river-- the kind without a single matching chair, some even missing a front window, as the music drifted out of every open doorway, blending together with the cacophony of the heavy foot traffic, waiting pedicabs, and a plethora of food carts crowding the narrow streets. As per usual on that side of town, live bands played most nights at El Tropicana on a large rooftop patio lined with ancient, multi-colored string lights.

"I'm Karina. My studio hosts a Latin dance night on Wednesdays. During the first hour, we teach some basic steps from the cha-cha and the merengue to rumba, salsa, mambo."

"Oh, I, uh...thanks, but I'm not much of a dancer. My fiancée is more the dancing type."

"You should bring them," Karina persisted. "It'll make the one you love happy to know you're wandering from your comfort zone in order to try something they like. And you know what they say about a man who knows how to move on a dance floor," she teased as she stuffed the rest of her flyers in the large tote hanging from her shoulder.

"We both work late most week nights, anyway." Will held out the flyer once more.

"Well, maybe one day you'll find you aren't so busy," Karina replied, once again refusing the paper.

Will sighed and shoved the flyer into the open compartment of his shoulder bag. The woman smiled, pleased, and continued down the sidewalk as he crossed the street toward his building.

***

Will took a long sip of his quad campana. He raised the blinds over the windows that comprised the back wall of his office, looking out over the cityscape from his view at the top of the converted warehouse, as the morning sun echoed among the glass and concrete of the downtown skyrises, glanced off the river that cut right through the heart of the city, and was pocketed in the lush green bowls of city parks and suburban hillsides elbowing their way amongst the infrastructure. The sunlight flooding the space helped to rouse him from the last vestiges of sleep that a morning commute could not and lessened the claustrophobia of days with too many long hours spent in-doors. He liked to enjoy his morning coffee as he looked out over a city he likened to himself in many ways-- the scaffolding of numerous buildings under construction were his bones, the river and the narrow roads and numerous bike paths winding among the hillsides, his veins. He had built himself into the heart of the city and saw himself as an old man someday, likened to a long-standing historic structure, obstinately unchanged and remaining, no matter how it clashed among whatever modern architecture would inevitably come and go. It made him feel stable and enduring if not a bit lonesome.

Will sat at his desk and launched his desktop schedule. He was adding notes about the next staff meeting, when a knock sounded at his open office door. He looked up to find Benjamin Wylde-- brother-in-law, business partner, and friend all rolled into one-- standing in the doorway, looking as if he was about to explode.

"What's up? Why do you have that look on your face? If you're here to badger me on my sister's behalf on why I haven't been to the house for dinner in over a month, you can turn right around," Will warned.

"We got it," he burst out. "We got the Brown and Barli project. They just called to say they've accepted our design."

"We got it," Will repeated doubtfully.

Will sat there motionless. Stunned. They'd spent the last six months working on their design and pitch for the Brown and Barli Urban Development Foundation. He had been thrilled and flabbergasted when they had been approached by the BBF board of directors to submit a full proposal based on an initial rough design, after previous contracts with another overseas firm had fallen through three years into construction. He did not think their comparatively modest design company would be chosen for such a competitive and highly sought-after account, particularly when they were up against much larger, more established, and internationally recognized companies. When he and Ben had relocated from Houston and partnered up seven years ago and put in every last cent of their savings, assets, and collateral to start their own landscape design firm, they had struggled for the first few years before achieving even modest success. Will had even lived with Ben and his sister and their new baby for those first few years. Even though they had grown more in the last few years than they had once thought possible, this was the kind of project he had been dreaming of, the kind of project that would put their company on the map and not only open them up to the most competitive projects anywhere in the country but firmly place them in contention in the international market.

Will whooped and jumped out of his chair, ran around his desk, and grabbed Ben around the waist, lifting him in the air and spinning him around. They hollered and cheered until the designers on the floor were compelled to leave their workstations and gather around Will's glassed-in cubical of an office to find out what all the commotion was about.

"We got the Brown and Barli project," Will announced.

Cheers and joyful pandemonium erupted throughout the entire office. Everyone knew what this would mean for all of them-- ever more vacillating periods of long hours and a heavy workload for the next eighteen months in exchange for a career-making opportunity.

"I've gotta call Marin," he told Ben. "Thank her and ask her if she wants to go out and celebrate with all of us tonight."

"Oh, that reminds me. The Burkhardt Group is managing the construction of the project, so we need to schedule a meeting with them for next week."

"I'll call them myself before lunch," Will promised.

"Give my best regards to Marin Martin." Ben bowed formally, putting on his most ridiculous and pretentious English accent. "I'm going to tell Junie the good news!" He turned and clicked his heels in the air before jogging back to his office.

***

"We got the job," Will exhaled as soon as his call was answered. He could practically hear Marin smiling smugly into the phone before she even spoke.

"I told you so."

"I know you did, baby. You've always believed in me and the dreams I've had for this company. We never would have landed this project without you, and I know I could never thank you enough," he effused.

"Your everlasting devotion will have to suffice," Marin intoned magnanimously. "And perhaps a diamond or two." She laughed at herself.

Will smiled. "Done and done."

"Now I hate to have to tell you that I'll be home late tonight and miss all the celebrating," she pouted. "I have a client meeting masquerading as yet another business dinner."

"That's too bad. Kevin will be beside himself," he teased.

"I'm sure," she snorted. "Actually, I'm glad you called, sweetheart. I had a little chat with Marcus today. He told me that you're ignoring him."

"Oh, shit. In all the commotion, I forgot to call him back."

"No worries," Marin placated, amused. "He's coming by your office today around lunch. I told him you'd be there, of course, since you can hardly be found anywhere else. It must be something very important for him to drive halfway across town in midday traffic to see you."

"I can hear the suspicion dripping from your voice," Will accused good-naturedly. "And before you can ask, no, I don't know what it's about." There was a pause on the other end of the line, and Will could practically see the wheels turning in Marin's head.

"All right," she capitulated. "You can tell me about it later when I get home from this wretched dinner. I'm so sorry I won't be able to celebrate with you and Ben and the others tonight."

"Hey," Will soothed. "You put up with my long hours, and you know that I know your work is every bit as important as mine. We can have our own private celebration later," He lowered his voice suggestively. "And at least now you won't have to pretend Kevin doesn't incite you to homicidal urges."

Marin snorted. "He may be a genius designer, but that man is a disgusting pig."

"I'll be sure to give him your best regards, then," Will chuckled.

"Love you, darling.”

"Love you too. See you tonight."

***       

Several harried hours had passed by the time Will could even take a moment to breathe. He had just hung up with an associate at Burkhardt when his office door opened and Marcus Underwood stepped inside. Marcus always looked GQ ready in his designer suits, and he walked with the easy confidence of the attractive, respected, and successful man that he was. Today was no different. The burnt apricot of his dress shirt looked practically delectable against his dark skin and complemented the charcoal silk of his jacket and the chocolate leather of his dress shoes. Will had often said that Marcus was a guy who could class up any joint. And no matter what he was wearing, he never seemed over or underdressed.

"Is it lunch already," Will asked, surprised.

"Lunch has come and gone, my friend. Luckily for you, I'm feeling particularly generous today," Marcus quipped, holding up a bag of carry-out from The Magnolia, a trendy local bistro that served spicy fried avocado and slaw tacos that Will ordered to-go as many as three times a week.

"First you descend from your throne on the other side of town, and now you're bribing me with tacos. Am I being sued or something?"

Marcus waved a hand, moving around the chairs across from Will's desk to sit down on the sofa by the windows, and crossed his legs, getting comfortable before replying. "It's nothing like that. I was already on this side of town for a meeting, and thought I'd stop by since you're ignoring my calls."

"So what's with the food and the persistence?"

"Well, if you'd bothered to answer my calls.... You know, you really ought to thank me."

"Thank you," Will mouthed around a gigantic bite of taco.

"Not just for dinner but for keeping Marin off the warpath."

"And whose blood would she be sniffing out?"

"Yours."

"Mine? What did I do?" Will was confounded, but Marcus smiled evilly, letting the panic set in.

"Well," he drawled, smoothing his tie in the special kind of affected nonchalant way of his that belied that he was about to impart some particularly juicy information.

"God, David's right. Now that I'm on the receiving end, it's insufferable when you do that."

"You leave my husband out of this," Marcus issued a heatless warning. "I'm trying to extract the maximum amount of enjoyment from this. It's the most exciting thing to happen to either of us all week."

"We got the Brown and Barli account," Will announced.

"Some might consider this to be bigger than that."

"Jeez. I'm almost afraid to ask. What could possibly be bigger than a once-in-a-lifetime, career-making opportunity?"

"Indeed," Marcus smirked. "So, I was digging through your financial records and such, putting the final touches on your prenup, when I stumbled across some rather interesting information." Will waited, feigning patience. Marcus laughed mischievously, shaking his head in amazement. "Honestly, Will, I didn't think you had it in you."

Now Will was really confounded. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Marcus extracted a single sheet of paper from his briefcase and made his unhurried way to Will's desk. "I'm talking about the fact that you're already married," Marcus finally answered, sliding the paper in front of Will, who sat there speechless, holding the remains of his dinner away from the offending document as if it might reach out to bite him. "For the last ten years or so. To a man, I might add. I admit that last little bit of information shocked the hell out of me," Marcus said, sounding rather...un-shocked. Now Marcus's six "urgent" voicemails to his cell and office in half as many days made sense.

Will looked down his nose at the single white sheet of paper, a blight among all the artifacts and documents on his crowded desk. It was a copy of a court record for a marriage license issued to a William Sylvian Bloom and an Ian Gabriel Santiago Alvarez Carlisle by the state of Nevada. Marcus studied Will with a laser eye as Will sat there, staring unblinking down at the thing before him, his expression all but neutral except for his slightly flared nose wings and the now noticeable pulse point at the side of his throat.

"Holy shit," Will deflated, tossing the remains of his dinner in the trash, his appetite gone. "I...Oh, man." He laughed mirthlessly and scrubbed his face with his hands. "I suppose I have some 'splaining to do."

Marcus lifted a single eyebrow as if to say, "No kidding." He settled into a chair across from Will's desk and laced his manicured hands together over his crossed knee, waiting patiently as Will frantically decided on whatever version of events he was going to tell that had led them up to this precise moment. Will sat back in his office chair and looked out toward the orange October skyline, as if preparing himself for a lengthy tale.

"There's not much to tell, really. We were a couple of stupid undergrads on our first trip to Sin City, blowing off some steam between final exams and the looming responsibilities of adulthood. We got a little wasted-- or a lot wasted-- and as a couple of young, drunk assholes are wont to do, immediately followed with even more bad decision-making. We went to one of those drive-through wedding chapels they used to have. Remember those? Anyone with one eye and a working nose could tell we were drunk and stoned off our asses. But it was...oh my god, it was just a joke! I had no idea it was a real marriage!"

"Good thing we discovered this now before you made a bigamist of yourself," Marcus supplied, garnishing far too much enjoyment from Will's burgeoning panic.

"Oh, my god. Mar," Will breathed, as if he finally remembered he had a fiancée, who might be less than thrilled to discover her betrothed was already married. "Oh, man." He exhaled, slumping down farther into his chair. "I was already going to pick up some thank-you-for-saving-my-ass jewelry for Marin tonight. Now I'm thinking I'm going to need to add a please-don't-dump-my-ass bouquet."

"It's going to take more than a few flowers to save you. Maybe a nice pair of earrings to go along with the necklace," Marcus advised teasingly.

"What about an annulment?"

"You haven't even married the girl yet!" Will gave him a look that told Marcus he was in no mood. "Just kidding. And you're about ten years and four months too late for that. But I take it that you'll be interested in a hasty divorce then?"

"Just tell me where to sign."

"Hmm. I thought you might. My office has already started drawing up some preliminary dissolution papers. We can have them ready to file and delivered to Mr. Carlisle's lawyer's office as soon as next week."

"I don't even know where he is. I haven't seen him in eight years."

"I also took the liberty of tracking down your husband...." Will shot Marcus a warning glare. "Uh, Mr. Carlisle," Marcus corrected. "Turns out he lives right here in town."

"You're kidding." He leaned forward with renewed energy. "I forgot that his family used to live around here. We could have passed each other on the street a dozen times and never known it." Will seemed to lose himself in thought at his own suggestion.

"Turns out your taste in men is as good as your taste in women." Marcus pulled a few more sheets of paper from his briefcase and laid them on the desk. "I started with a basic Google search and found quite a bit of information. He's worked as a freelance writer in Washington, New York, Louisiana, Oregon, California.... He's had articles published in The New Yorker, The Huffington Post, The Advocate, The Smithsonian, and the New York Times.... He won an O. Henry Award. Pretty impressive.... He's most recently worked as an adjunct professor at a couple local universities for the last couple years...."

Will looked over the papers as Marcus spoke, his attention fading in and out. He stopped on a couple of photos of Ian smiling up at him from the grainy Internet printout. The same hazel-green eyes, medium brown hair, and pronounced Spanish nose he remembered. One picture looked as if it had been blown up from one accompanying a magazine article. He was smiling broadly, the crows feet spreading out from the corners of his eyes, the growing beard on his jaw making the cleft in his chin more pronounced. His eyes were squinted, head down, running a hand through his hair, as if someone had just said something that made him laugh and embarrassed him at the same time. Still with that hair that won't stay put, Will thought, noticing the finger-length waves and how they looked eternally ravaged by nervous fingers. And that made him feel better, for some reason, as if Ian could not possibly be a complete stranger to him now, since he still had that unkempt hair he could not stop running his fingers through. And now that he had put it that way, it seemed a pathetic thought.

Ian looked just the same yet different. Perhaps it was a contribution to growing older, losing some of the self-consciousness of youth for the self-assurance of age. He looked good. Better than he remembered, if Will was being honest. He looked so vital and alive, barely able to be contained by a mere photograph. He looked...happy. God, how the hell did he know whether or not he was happy? Perhaps he was just projecting his own hopes for Ian's happiness onto him as a way to assuage his own guilt for abandoning his friend. Will felt simultaneously heavy and hollow and suddenly so full of regret that he had to resist the urge to rub at the potent ache in his chest.

"...Plus, I admit to wanting to get a look at this big, dark secret in your past," Marcus continued, oblivious to Will's lack of attention.

"Stop making it out to be some deliberate deception on my part," Will snapped, finally looking up.

Marcus held up his hands conciliatory. "I implied no such thing. But, Will," Marcus pinned him with a stare. "What do you think everyone's going to think when you tell them?"

Will groaned, massaging his temples with one hand. "I wish there were a way around having to tell anyone anything. God, what a shit storm that's gonna be." He brought his hand down heavily against the top of his desk and sighed. "How long do you think this divorce will take?"

"Mr. Carlisle has twenty days to respond once the original petition for divorce has been filed with the court. It'll take sixty days for the divorce to finalize once the final papers have been filed. If the divorce agreements go uncontested, you could be a divorced man in just a few months. However, because Texas is a no-fault state, Mr. Carlisle could be entitled to fifty percent of your assets. If he decides to contest the divorce or attempts to lay claim to his share of your assets, he could cause a lot of trouble for you. He could even put Wylde Bloom at risk."

"No," Will shook his head adamantly. "Ian's not like that."

Marcus looked doubtful. "Nevertheless. It can't hurt to be prepared. The fact that you've been estranged for the majority of your marriage and, indeed, did not even realize you were legally married will benefit our case in court should it come to that. I'll let you know when we hear from Mr. Carlisle's lawyer."

"Actually, I'd like to speak with Ian first, if you don't mind. I have no idea what I'm gonna tell him, but it seems like the right thing to do. Eight years is a long time."

"Of course," Marcus agreed, a private smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"And I'd like to hold off on telling Marin or my family about my sham marriage until I can talk with Ian and we can file the papers. So don't go blabbing about this to anyone." Will pointed a censuring finger.

"Whatever you say. Chock it up to attorney-client privilege, shall we?" Marcus stood over the desk and picked up the photo printout of Ian. "But there is something about him, isn't there? A  _magnetism_." Marcus filled up his mouth with the word, making it sound even more weighted and grand that it was. "It's a shame really, a good looking man like that married to someone who can't even appreciate him." Marcus cocked his head slyly. "Or maybe you did, hmm? Maybe you've been holding out on us all these years. Would've made my life a hell of a lot easier. Do you know how many men I've had to turn down on your behalf? Gregory at the firm has been praying for sign from you for ye...."

Will snatched the paper from Marcus, who raised an eyebrow in baffled amusement. "Thanks for all of this, Marcus. Now get the hell out of my office."

The other man laughed, unoffended, as he shut the door behind himself, leaving Will to marinate in his thoughts.

***

It took Will nearly two weeks to build up the courage to make the phone call. His heart was about ready to pound through his chest as he punched the ten digits into the keypad. His hands were sweating so much, he had to switch the phone set back and forth, wiping his moist palms against his pant legs. He held his breath, willing the other end to go unanswered.

***

"Hello," Ian answered, juggling his cell phone, a laptop case, a stack of papers, and a half-eaten apple in his arms as he walked up the sidewalk toward the language building at Lake Hills College.

"Hey, you," a familiar voice replied.

"Hey, yourself," Ian smiled.

"Babe...."  _Uh-oh._ That tone of voice that implied he was not going to like what happened next. "I hate to cancel our plans on such short notice, but I have a meeting with a new client this afternoon. There's a last minute budget meeting before then, and.... Well, I won't bore you with the details, but it looks like I'll be working through lunch today."

"Oh." Ian stopped in his tracks, swallowing his disappointment. "Uh...no, that's all right. I have papers to grade, and Esme's been trying to get me to go with her to some Indian vegan place. Maybe I'll give her a call."

"Thanks for being so understanding."

"What’re ya gonna do," Ian shrugged. "Are we still on for that thing this weekend?"

"Absolutely. Wouldn't miss it," Christian promised. "And...," he paused to build suspense. "I come with a peace offering. My new clients are major donors to The Modern, and they've given me two tickets to a private showing of the new Kara Walker exhibit before it opens to the public. There will also be a symposium on queer people of color in art in America or something. Oh, and Maria Frida and Lorenco Marques will be part of an artist panel." It was like dangling a rainbow carrot in front of a gay horse, and Christian's tone implied as much. "It sounded like something you'd be interested in."

Ian smiled begrudgingly. "You thought right."

Damn him and his peace offerings. Christian knew he loved Kara Walker. And Maria Frida! Her  _Losing You_  series practically changed his life the first time he saw it almost fifteen years ago. The photographer was nearly seventy now and increasingly reclusive in the last ten years. He may never have another opportunity to hear her speak about her own work in person. Christian was a master at keeping his lovers happy, following the sting of each disappointment with a pitch perfect gesture that made it impossible for Ian to remain angry with him.

"All right then." The sound of victory was in Christian's voice. "I'll talk to you later."

"Bye."

"Goodbye."

Thirty seconds later, the phone rang again.

"If you've called me back to cancel again, Christian, I swear to god...."

"Uh...."

_Oops. Not Christian._

"Hello?" No answer. "Who is this?" Ian could hear breathing on the other end of the line. "I can hear you breathing, you know." More loud breathing. "It sounds like a deviated septum. My father had one of those." The mystery breather cleared his throat.  _Bingo_. "Snored like a grizzly bear, nearly destroyed my parents' marriage...." Weak laughter greeted him at the other end. Then more clearing of a throat.

"Ian," the voice said. Not as a question, as in “Is this the Ian I'm looking for? Do I have the right number?” But  _Ian_ , as a statement, almost intimate and familiar.

Ian was not sure why, but it made his stomach flutter. Maybe he should have answered affirmatively, he thought. But instead, he waited for the voice to speak again.

"God, where do I start? You're probably wondering why I'm even calling you after all these years."

Ian's stomach dropped, as if the little jostle of the elevator as it settled on his floor was suddenly a cut cable after all.

"Will." The name was spoken quietly, as if disbelief made a louder utterance inappropriate. It felt so surreal to even speak the name after so many years. The silence before Will's next words was near-oppressive in its weight.

"Yeah...um," Will's voice sounded thick. "You'll never believe it, but we're in the same city again."  _God, what an awkward, terrible way to start this conversation._   _Maybe I should have thought this through more._  Except he had barely thought about anything else for two weeks.

"No, I know," Ian said. "My sister told me." _Ugh, why did I say that?_

"Your sister?"

"Esme. Her ex-partner is Victoria Grant, the curator of the Nierman Gallery. You helped design their sculpture garden or something."

"Oh," was all Will could think to say.

That had been at least three years ago. Ian had known, and he had never tried to contact him. Will's disappointment was swift and deep, and it surprised him. Suddenly, it was as if the pavement had risen up from under him to smack him in the face, and Will had never been more sorry in his life. This was his fault. He knew he took the lion's share of blame in their drifting apart. God, he had been such an asshole! Ian had held on for years of one excuse after another. He was too busy to visit. Then he was even too busy to call. And then he stopped returning Ian's phone calls all together until Ian finally gave up. The last time he had seen Ian, Ian had spent money he did not have to fly out to California to visit him and then spent the majority of the time in Will's apartment by himself.

"I'm so sorry," Will choked. His voice sounded quivery and raw. "I'm more sorry than I can ever say."  _God, get ahold of yourself, Will_. He had not cried in years, and now he had nearly broke down twice today.

"Whoa. Hey, it's okay, man. It was a long time ago." Ian was not certain it was okay, but he was willing to say anything to cut this awkward to end all awkward conversations short.

"It's something I should've said a long time ago. I was such a selfish asshole, and I'm so sorry."

Ian felt a sudden swell of anger and a burning sensation at the back of his throat. He swallowed against the rising bile.  _What the hell?_  He'd washed his hands of Will Bloom a long damn time ago. So why did that apology mean anything at all to him now? He shook his head, as if Will could actually see it over the phone.

"Okay."  _Okay? How stupid._  But what else could he say?  _No, you're not forgiven? Fuck you, asshole, for abandoning me?_

"Okay?" Will sounded unsure.

"Yeah," Ian shrugged. "Okay."

"O-okay.... Um, listen, there's a reason I called...."  _No shit._  One doesn't call without a reason, especially not after the better part of a decade. But Ian could not even fathom what the reason could be. Continually reticent and nervous, Will finally managed, "Do you think you'd be free to meet me for coffee...or something...sometime?" The words tumbled and tangled in burst out of Will's mouth.

"Uh...." Will was asking him out for coffee? And do what? Catch up like a couple of old college buddies? Well, that was what they were. So why did it feel like more than that? Because he had been betrayed and abandoned, that's why. Will had dumped him, cut him out of his life. He should just tell Will no and goodbye and be done with it. Will was a part of his past. A past he did not want to revisit.

"There's something I'd like to speak with you about. It's important."

Ian was utterly perplexed. What could Will possibly have to say, all of a sudden, after all these years? What could he possibly want? Not to take up where they left off after eight years, certainly. That was too much to expect. But now that Ian had allowed himself such a thought, the fluttering in his belly told him he did not feel as opposed to the idea as he perhaps thought he should. No, he could not. Too much time had passed. Letting Will back in his life now would be too disruptive. He should forgive and then forget, as they say. He would let Will say his piece and be done with it.

"Sure." Wait. Had he meant to say that?

"Can you meet me today?"  _Whoa_. This was going a little fast. He had not even had time to recover from the phone call.

"Uh...." God, he was so eloquent. But what to do? "Actually, my lunch hour just opened up," Ian admitted.  _Shit_. He definitely had not meant to say that. He was such a terrible liar when put on the spot. The truth just came tumbling out, completely unbidden.

"I can meet you at one," Will was saying, sounding grateful. "At Café Avoca. Do you know it?"

"Yeah...." Well, he did know it. They had the best coffee in town.

"Great. I'll see you then. Um...thank you."

And then he was gone. What the heck had just happened? Ian pulled his phone away from his face and looked down at it accusingly, as if to say it was all his phone's fault. Why did it pick up? How could it let him get into this mess? Why couldn't a call fail when you needed one? And then he realized he was standing on a public walkway outside his workplace, having an audible argument with a cell phone, and walked hurriedly inside.

***

Ian had been sitting at the table for fifteen minutes trying to calm himself down. He had been a nervous wreck all morning. He had cut his conference period short because he was absolutely useless just sitting about at his desk praying for some act of god to get him out of this. He considered driving home to change his clothes. He could have just called and said that something came up. But no, for some reason, he could not lie. And before he knew it, he was dodging co-workers and students and jogging to his car well before the time he actually needed to leave.

Café Avoca was a small downtown cafe that catered to the college and club crowd the last four days of the week, when they stayed open for twenty-four hours and served breakfast all day long. It was small and congested inside, though sleekly arranged in an industrial style, with small high tables and stools set amongst the black laminate, bare wood, and chrome. Most of the seating was outside on an expansive patio that had been added some years ago. But it was a chilly day, and so he had taken a table for two by the front windows so he could watch for Will when he arrived. He had ordered an herbal tea-- to the gratitude of his churning stomach-- and thought back on the day his sister had called him with the name of Will Bloom on her lips. Esme had recognized the name when her ex-partner, Tori, had told her the designer from the landscape firm they had chosen to design their new permanent sculpture exhibit in the exterior courtyard. No "hello" or "how do you do" from Esme. Nope. That was not her style. Always direct and to the point with that one. Just "William Bloom. Do you remember him?" when he had picked up the phone and then nearly dropped it at the near-assault of having that name thrown at him out of the blue.

But Will was more than just a designer. He was the damn owner. Wylde Bloom. His name was on the logo and the business cards. Ian had googled him that night. He had been impressed with the work Will's firm had done. He had even seen some of them in person. Wylde Bloom had co-designed the perennial gardens on the roof of the Poirot Natural Science and History Museum as well as the Brook White AIDS Memorial for the Nelson White Resource Center, the second largest LGBT support organization in the country. The design had received national attention a few years ago when the memorial had been unveiled to the public. Thousands of hand-painted tiles-- designed in memory of loved ones who had died of AIDS-- had been collected from all over the world, by people from AIDS activist Spencer Cox to the children of the Kaguri School, a South African school for children orphaned by AIDS. The tiles had been arranged along a walkway that cut through the memorial garden. It was the city's own, permanent AIDS Memorial quilt. The memorial also included an art wall-- a revolving collection of AIDS activism art designed by both local children and internationally recognized artists. He recalled how the memorial had affected him when he had first seen it. It had seemed so much more significant then, to find out that someone with whom he had once been so close had been behind it. He had then searched out a current photo of Will on his company website. It had felt unholy strange to be looking at a photo of his old friend on a computer in the dark, wearing a tattered university shirt and eating Cheerios for dinner. He had surreptitiously looked around his apartment then, as if someone might be spying on him in such a sad display, and had felt utterly foolish to be so paranoid.

Ian had been staring into his cup for god knew how long, letting the steam rising up from the hot tea hypnotize him into a daze, as if the pale fluid were a crystal ball reflecting back to him the images from his past. He looked up then, clearing his mind's eye, to see Will walking up to the front doors of the cafe. Ian sat up straighter, trying to arrange himself in an approachable way, perhaps impress him with his good posture?  _Ugh_. He was hopeless.

Will's head was down, dark brown hair whipped about by the wind, his brow creased in thought. He walked differently, Ian was surprised to notice right away. Less unspent nervous energy and more easy confidence. It suited him. He had dressed down in jeans, a knit pullover, and a sport coat. He had bulked up his lean runners build a bit since he had last seen him. He looked good. Even better than his picture. Will immediately spotted Ian across the little cafe and smiled a smile that reached his eyes, now much-lined by time, but seemed to constrict around his mouth in self-conscious nerves. Ian could not have said why, but all of those unfamiliar, little lines spreading out from the corners of Will's eyes filled Ian with a curiously potent though fleeting anguish. Ian stood up from the table, palms rubbing nervously against his pant legs. He held out his hand as Will approached the table, uncertain of what else to do.

It was a long walk from the door to that little table, like a slow motion montage with music swelling, but unfortunately with a lot less  _An Affair to Remember_  romantic nostalgia and a little too much  _Jaws_  terrified anticipation. Will let a full smile burst forth as he took the hand Ian offered and used it to pull him into a hug. Ian barely had time to think about returning the gesture before Will patted him twice on the back and released him. The awkward hug and generic buddy pat was almost as depressing as the pathetic handshake Ian had offered. They sat down, trying to make friendly faces at one another-- but only coming out awkward-- for agonizing seconds until the black-clad waiter-- sporting two-inch gauges, a purple faux-hawk, and a neck tattoo-- approached the table to take their lunch order. Will felt free to observe his lunch companion while his attention was on the menu in front of him. Will fought the urge to fidget in his seat as he looked over the menu.

"Ben is always bringing me coffee from here, but I've never actually been in this place." Had he, they just might have crossed paths sooner. Ian carded his hands through his hair, and Will smiled at the familiar gesture.

Ian ordered the spinach crepes with hollandaise and a dark roast coffee, and Will ordered the same. It was the same thing Ian always ordered from there. But he could feel Will's eyes on him as something palpable, and he suddenly could not remember what he was supposed to be doing with the plastic coated paper in front of him. Giving back his the menu to the waiter, Ian looked up to find Will with a strange half-smile directed at him.

"What?"

"Nothing," Will shrugged. "Just some things never change, is all."

Ian had no idea what to say to that, and so merely sat there looking expectant, hoping that would move things along.

"This is weird, right?" Will smiled nervously.

"Unbearably so," Ian nodded, chuckling self-consciously into his coffee.

"So, Uh...," Will fumbled. "You're probably wondering why I just called you out of the blue after eight years wanting to see you."

"Pretty much," Ian agreed, eyes taking in Will intently now.

Will coughed and dropped his eyes to his hands around the coffee cup that had appeared from nowhere, grateful to have something to do with his hands. "I honestly don't know where to start." Ian waited. "So, I guess I'll just come out with it."

"Okay." Ian quickly sat back, realizing he had been leaning slowly forward in anticipation until he was practically bent completely over the table. He leaned far back in his chair and extended one leg, hoping that if he appeared to be relaxed, he might make it so. But then his foot bumped the table leg, and the momentary panic of thinking it might have been Will's foot caused him to curl up around his coffee cup once more.

"Um, do you remember that trip we took to Vegas before graduation?"

Ian started for a moment. That was so far from what he had been expecting Will to say, he almost forgot it was his turn to speak. "Uh, yeah," he nodded, his confusion clear on his face. "What about it?"

"Uh, well...." Will cleared his throat, a terrible nervous habit he had not recognized in himself before. "Do you remember what happened that last night?" Ian stared silently, a strange plethora of veiled and shifting emotions playing across his features. He waited so long to reply, Will began to fidget in earnest.

"A lot happened that night," Ian prevaricated, mirroring Will's posture with both hands wrapped protectively around his own coffee cup.

"Yeah, but I mean," Will huffed out a sigh, impatient with himself. "Do you remember that other graduation present I gave you?"

"Yeah...," Ian drew out, clearly waiting for Will to finish.

"We got pretty wasted that night."

"I remember."

God, he was acting like he was falling apart, and Ian seemed so calm. Will cleared his throat yet again before meeting Ian's eyes once more. "Do you remember anything after that?"

Ian's patience was wavering. "What is this about, Will? You call me up after nearly a decade of silence to what? Reminisce about some time we got high together when we were stupid kids?"

Will sighed deeply and rubbed a hand over his face. "No, I'm sorry, it's just...it's just so surreal and awkward to be here telling you this...," he stammered. "We're married." There, he had said it, and then he almost laughed at the look of utter surprised confusion washing over Ian's face.

Then Ian allowed a smile to leak out around his mouth. "Oh, right. Yeah, I remember that. We drove through that ridiculous drive-through wedding chapel. God, I could barely stand up straight." Ian seemed relieved to have a tangible train of thought to hold onto.

"Well, here's the thing."  _Jesus, here goes._ "What we thought of as a joke at the time, turned out to be a bit more legally binding that we originally thought."

"What are you talking about?" All relief vanished from Ian's face. "We just drove up to a chapel and ordered a wedding like a happy meal at McDonald's. It's not like we went down to the courthouse and signed any official documents."

"Well, we did sign one. And as it turns out, it was pretty official."

Will pulled out the folded marriage record from his pants pocket, unfolded it, and placed it on the table between them. Ian cast Will a doubtful glance, rubbing at his stubbled jaw, before he picked up the document and scanned its contents. Will watched Ian's head twitch and his eyes grow more intent as realization seeped in.

"Holy shit," Ian swore. "You mean that wedding was real?" He looked up then, eyes round.

Will snorted ruefully. "That's exactly what I said. And it looks that way."

"We were married. For real."

"Still married actually, seeing as we never got a divorce."

"Oh, my god," Ian covered his mouth and then began laughing hysterically, drawing glances from other cafe patrons. When he caught his breath, he sat back in his seat. Stupefied. And Will had a flickering flashback to a Vegas cantina from eleven years ago. "I'm kinda speechless here."

"I don't blame you. So was I."

"Why now? After all this time," Ian asked, dropping his voice a little and leaning farther over the table. "Why are we just now finding out about this?"

 _Why, indeed._  Will felt nervous all over again. "We might never have been the wiser if my lawyer hadn’t dug it up when he was putting together my financial records for a prenup," Will explained, holding his coffee cup to his lips as he finally took a sip, seeming to remember that he had ordered the drink for more than just a decoration for his idyll hands.

"A prenup." Ian sounded full of friendly interest, but inside, his stomach sank. He did not know why. He should have felt neutral or even happy for Will, but he just felt...glum.

"Yeah," Will swallowed. "I'm getting married," he said with a feigned excitement he just did not feel at the moment.

It had nothing to do with the girl, Will thought. She was wonderful. Any man would be so lucky to be able to call Marin Martin his own. Marin Martin was a marketing exec-- a managing director of the design department at her advertising firm on the fast track to success. She had helped make Will's dream for his company into the success it had become in the last few years by helping them launch their in-house marketing team and making Wylde Bloom visible to a broader market. What had begun as a professional relationship of gratitude and mutual respect between William Bloom and Marin Martin had bloomed, so to speak, into love. Will found himself explaining all of this out loud to Ian as proof of his own devotion, but damn if the timing could not have been more off. He would be planning a wedding, getting a divorce, and working on the largest project his company had ever attempted. Suddenly, Will found it difficult to breathe or swallow. The waiter had arrived with their food, and Will began to down the entire carafe of water he had snatched from the waiter's hands. The waiter raised an incredulous eyebrow but then shrugged and moved to his next table.

"Wow," Ian said, watching Will frantically refill his water glass. He could not think of what else to say. What did people normally say to news like this?  _It's about time? When's the baby due?_  That did not seem appropriate. "I have to say, I'm surprised," Ian admitted. "You were always the one saying the whole marriage and family thing was not for you. Who'd have thought you'd be the one to get married first." And now that he had said it, Ian felt a sting of dissatisfaction so sudden and consuming, he wanted to curl up in bed with his Netflix account and box of Mallomars. For a moment, he felt fairly old and pathetic. This must be what the spinster bridesmaid felt like.

Of course, Will knew that Ian was not married, or it would have been him being served the divorce papers. But the fact that Ian-- sweet and thoughtful Ian, who had always wanted the relationship instead of the one-night stand, who had wanted the husband and the dog and the house and the two-point-five children, who saw what his parents had together and always thought he would have the same thing someday-- was still walking alone in the world made the world seem that much more cruel and unfair a place.

"You were always the kind to believe in true love and the right one and all that bullhockey."

An indecipherable look passed over Ian's face before he said, "I still believe in all that crap, as you call it. Maybe I just haven't been willing to settle for less than what I want, like some people are willing to do."

Will's jaw sharpened as he thought there might have been an unuttered touché there, but he decided to let the comment slide. Too many people did end up settling for something less than what they wanted. Usually, they immediately ended up with less than they deserved. His mother certainly had, and he had spent the last thirty-odd years trying to avoid the same mistake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, lovelies. This is my first attempt at a substantive work of fiction, so any constructive input would be most appreciated. I started this story over a year ago but life has been interrupting my plans, and I'm finally getting back to writing this with a clear direction of where I want it to go and as a form of therapy for the last year and a half from hell.


	3. Autumn Winds and Sweater Weather

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Autumn winds are swirling up more change than merely the color of leaves. Will and Ian try to navigate their existing relationships in light of their unexpected marriage. Ian has an evil twin, and Will learns something very surprising about his accidental husband.

The October wind clutched at her clothes with icy fingertips. A cold front was swiftly moving in, making for an unseasonably cold early autumn day. Karina ran up the walkway, clutching her emerald scarf about her neck as the wind threatened to snatch it from her throat and ducked her head against the biting chill as she headed for the glass doors of the coffee shop. The wind rudely pushed her inside the building-- a momentary chaos in a flurry and bustle of disheveled clothes and wind-whipped hair and quickened breath. As she approached the coffee bar to collect her to-go order, she caught sight of a familiar face at one of the crowded inside tables. She was already smiling, raising a hand and opening her mouth to call out to the man. But there was something intimate and familiar about the way the other dark-haired, blue-eyed man across the small table leaned closer to him and laid a hand over his before quickly pulling it away almost as if the familiar gesture had been accidental, that told her she should leave the men to the privacy of their conversation. There was a shocking vulnerability that played over her friend’s face as the blue-eyed man spoke quietly, almost urgently to him, whose gaze was locked on their joined hands on the table between them.

"Ma'am. Ma'am?" The barista held out the loaded cup carrier and a small black box with cheese croissants.

"What? Oh, thank you."

Karina took the beverages and comestibles and stole glances back to the other men as she handed money to the cashier. The two men stood to leave then, walking toward the back exit at the opposite end of the narrow cafe, and she leaned far back, trying to track them outside.

"Ma'am," the cashier sighed, trying to return her change.

She held out her hand distractedly, watching the men's parting exchange through the front glass. The cashier rolled his eyes as he waved the money over her weaving hand, attempting to drop the bills and loose coins into her open palm, but he missed and dropped them all over the counter instead. She whipped her head back around at the sound of coins noisily bouncing and clattering against the counter top. She was apologetic as she quickly scooped up the change and dumped it in the tip jar next to the register.

She shuffled hurriedly to the front exit, colliding with another patron as the wind forced them inside. She nearly dropped her drink tray, but two hands reached out to steady the toppling load in her arms. Suddenly, Karina found herself with two arms grasping hers as they scuffled about in a half-embrace, in a kind of impromptu dance at the entrance of the quaint establishment.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," said her unwitting dance partner, releasing Karina to reach down and replace the bags that had slipped off Karina's shoulder into the crook of her arm.

"It's this blasted wind," the other woman said, for it was a woman Karina noticed as she met her eyes.

"It's the kind of force that makes things happen," Karina said, inciting a pleasant laugh from the auburn-haired woman with a child-like sparkle in her blue eyes.

"I can feel that,” the woman replied with another laugh. “There're probably perfect strangers being blown together all over the city!’

Karina matched her gameful grin. “Who knows what works of fate will ignite today with a mere gust of wind." 

"Oh, I like your bag."

Karina looked down at her large tote to see the woman touching the black and white screen print of a dancing couple, pictured in frame from mid-visage to mid-leg. Their faces were obscured, and their hands clasped low as the female partner lifted her leg over his and he twisted and leaned his torso in toward hers, forcing her to lean back, her hair and hemline swirling about as if in a rotating motion.

"Uh, thank you," Karina replied half-heartedly, once again distracted as she glanced over the woman's shoulder just in time to see the two men embrace.

Karina hardly heard the woman excuse herself as she moved aside, for she only had eyes for the face of her friend, now awash with surprise as he patted Blue Eyes on the back and pulled away only to find himself jerked back into the hug. There was not much about the gesture between the two men that would turn heads or raise the eyebrow of a casual passer-by, but Karina noticed a subtlety of body language, something about the way Blue Eyes leaned completely into the embrace for a prolonged moment to speak against her friend’s ear that tipped her interest, or how her friend tucked his chin into Blue Eyes's neck, a bittersweet expression stealing over his face, unseen by his companion.

"Do you know those men," the woman asked from over Karina's shoulder.

Karina jumped guiltily. She had not even noticed the woman was standing directly behind her, watching her spying. Karina threw a distracted reply over her shoulder as she clutched her purchases to her chest and pushed against the glass door, peeking around the outside of the entrance.

Blue Eyes had plucked a forgotten scarf from the back of their mutual friend’s chair on his way out the door and seemed to remember now that he was clutching it in his hand. There was something familiar about that other man, Karina thought as she watched the other man wrap the cloth around the neck of her friend, who suffered the attention with embarrassed indulgence. What had transpired between them that they now stood shuffling around nervously in front of one another as if neither knew how to end their exchange? If Karina had not known better, she would have thought they were having some kind of rendezvous. Or perhaps, they were old lovers who had run into one another by chance on the street and stopped by for a quick coffee to catch up. She knew her friend was seeing someone, and that someone was not the one currently in his arms.  _Curiouser and curiouser._  Karina waited for the men to bid their final goodbyes and head to their separate vehicles before she dashed back to her own car. And as she pulled out of the parking lot, the wheels in her head were turning so fast, the friction was throwing off sparks.

***

Ian was not sure where he had gone wrong. That had not gone at all the way he had planned. He had nodded dumbly, attention tossed about in a constant, nauseating swirl of memory, imagination, and assumption between the Will before him and the one his memory had kept alive in his mind somewhere for the last eight years. But his memory now held less to the words they had said and more to the warmth of Will's hand touching his as they sat at that small cafe table. Ian had listened numbly to Will as they had sketched out the proceedings for a quick divorce.  _Divorce_. God. That word seemed to hang in the air like some incessant thought bubble following him through every frame of the rest of his afternoon. He had not even known he was married, and now he was getting divorced. Sure, being a gay man sometimes meant some things were done a little backwards compared to straight people and the luxury of privilege with which they were born, but this was bordering on the ridiculous. He could just imagine what Esme would say. Or his mother. Or Christian. Ian groaned inwardly. Well, this was going to be fun. Hilarious as a colonoscopy, rather.

They had cut their impromptu coffee date short, as Will had a meeting and Ian had an afternoon writing lab. And although Ian had planned to let Will say what he had come to say and then forever part ways once more, he had found himself silently accepting Will's departing embrace, waving densely before stumbling to his car. All morning, Ian had worked himself up to give Will a piece of his mind, tell him all of the things he had once thought he would say if he happened to run into his old friend one day. Only when the time came, he had nothing. It was an old story. And that was his problem. In his fantasies, he was the epitome of quick wit and eloquence, but when he was required to grasp words from thin air in the heat of the moment and string them together in some sort of intelligible fashion, he just felt flustered and tongue-tied. Perhaps this was precisely why he preferred the written medium of communication. He had improved much over the years, however. Public speaking and teaching courses had helped him with that, but Will had stolen that hard-won composure from him from the first word. And Ian wanted to be angry. At himself. And especially at Will. Only the anger he had once held onto and for so long seemed so pointless now. He had finally realized he no longer had the energy or even the desire for it. It sat in the gut of his soul like a glob of battery acid, slowly eating away at him, and all the righteous indignation he was certain he would feel had just melted away and now left him feeling unsettled and deeply dissatisfied. And he had no idea what to do with it.

Ian floated through his last class and found himself sitting in the modest one-car garage beneath his loft apartment with no idea how he had arrived there. Opening the back door leading into the kitchen, he was greeted by a German Shepherd wagging her tail excitedly.

"Hey, girl," Ian mumbled affectionately, scratching behind her ear as he walked in. "You can't imagine what a strange day I've had."

Ian passed through the dining and living rooms and up the stairs to the loft space, the dog following him devotedly. He changed into a worn t-shirt and cut-off sweat pants and grabbed a pair of sneakers from his closet. "How 'bout a run, Lola?"

The dog stood up, chuffing and wagging her tail with renewed vigor at the familiar word.

***

Ian focused on the inhaling and expelling of air from his lungs. He listened to the sound of his feet hitting the pavement of the dirt trail, the subtle slapping of Lola's pads against the compacted earth, and the ocean of chatter of leaves rustling all around and overhead. He tuned in to the feel of the steady pounding of his heartbeat, the cool air passing over his skin starting to prickle with sweat as his body moved-- the way it fingered at his collar and slid under the hem of his shirt-- the welcome strain of his body as he set a sustainable pace. All came together in a hypnotic rhythm that propelled his body forward in perfect sync-- a miraculous machine. He ran until he felt transformed from a cognitive being into a visceral animal wholly consumed by physical sensation, if only briefly.

Ian patted Lola's side as she panted heavily. He refilled her water bowl in the kitchen before he grabbed a refillable water bottle from the fridge and downed it in one endless swallow. He searched the fridge, hoping for some divine inspiration for the night's evening meal, and found a meaty polenta and grain pilaf and sweet plantains cooked in honey and a spicy chili sauce, which Esme had brought over for him the weekend before. He emptied a can of black beans and chopped up a sweet potato, dumping a handful of the cubes into Lola's food bowl before adding fajita seasoning to his own plate. He poured the mixture over the pilaf before topping it all with the honey-dipped plantains.

"Not too bad, huh, Lola," Ian said as he sat down at the dining room table with a glass of iced tea and switched on the TV just to drown out the silence.

It often proved challenging to work up the desire to cook an interesting meal for one in the middle of the workweek. On the weekends, when Christian was over, they often stayed at his place downtown, which meant they usually ate out. Ian ate his dinner and rinsed the dishes in a trance before wandering up to the open office space in front of the bedroom at the top of the loft.

Once Lola grew bored with chewing on her bone at her place on the rug in front of the fireplace, she made her way up the stairs to find her person sitting at the bottom of the rickety attic ladder, surrounded by dusty file boxes. She watched him curiously as Ian tossed another rummaged box to the side and pulled another one before his lap, removing the lid.

Wading through filled notebooks, ancient college term papers, and an amalgam of long-abandoned artifacts from his college days, Ian found a manila envelope at the bottom of the box. He dumped out a short stack of pictures into his hand. He flipped through a few snapshots of coeds in various states of drunkenness posing with red plastic cups and beer bottles at dorm parties and around abused bar tables. Some names he could recall, most he could not. He smiled and shook his head with begrudging affection. They reminded him of his own students, dragging themselves to class after an eventful weekend, still with their flip flops and pajama bottoms.

Ian paused at a photo of Will taken in a close-up profile-- shades on, hair blown back, open space extending out from beyond the driver's side window, his features bathed in golds and oranges. He snorted audibly at the reminder of the Don Henley song. He remembered Will’s utter disdain for the tune. Will had once told him that it was his former roommate’s getting-pumped-for-the-weekend anthem. “Every damn Friday night,” Will would mutter before changing the radio station with a forceful jab of his finger. Ben would lock himself in his bathroom with “Boys of Summer” blaring through their apartment, emerging only after he was sufficiently shaved, gelled, and spritzed. Then Will's one-time roommate went off and married Will's sister, and eventually, Ian had come into his life. Another picture showed the two of them, tanned and shirtless, with their arms around each other's shoulders. It must have been that summer they had taken that trip to the coast. Yet another photograph had captured the two of them in front of the famous fountains at the Bellagio. The last was of the two of them once again, standing through the roof of Will's old T-top. They were wearing jeans and t-shirts, and Will had an arm wrapped around a smiling Ian, pulling him in close to kiss his cheek near the corner of his mouth. They were holding a sign made from the back of an unfolded diner menu, on which had been written _Just Married_. So many memories, long-repressed and forgotten, flooded over Ian at once, and they pushed against his chest with a palpable weight.

"What are we gonna do, girl," Ian sighed.

At the sound of her name, Lola stood and moved to her human, leaning heavily against his side. Ian wrapped an arm around her head and nuzzled the side of her face, massaging an ear between his fingers. The vague sense of unease and dissatisfaction he had felt since parting with Will earlier in the day settled heavily over him now. He did not know how to proceed from here, but he knew he could not carry this-- whatever  _this_  was-- the burden of his past with Will around for the rest of his life. He had learned to ignore the Will-shaped hole that had been left in his life. He had had a long time to try to fill it with other people, places, and things. But that old wound was blown wide open now, and he could feel it growing from the eternal lack of closure between them. He needed that closure now, he realized, or the struggle it would take to move on from Will suddenly slamming back into his consciousness would torment him and disrupt the only recently-discovered tranquility of his life. He took no stock in the old adage about the power of time to heal all wounds. That was not his experience. Time was merely the scar tissue that padded the wound and numbed it. And here Will came, waltzing back into his life and ripping away all that built up tissue with all the subtlety of a cheese grater.

Out of sheer desperation, Ian pulled his cell from his pants pocket and pressed a number for speed dial.

***

The knit-capped, bob-headed brunette merely stared at him for a long moment before standing up from the couch and walking silently into the kitchen with Lola trailing behind her. She returned with the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon she had brought with her, refilled both of their glasses, and then settled back into the couch cushions once more, tucking her bare feet beneath her and stroking Lola's head.

"So basically, you married your straight former best friend and kept it a secret from everyone for more than ten years, and now you're finally getting divorced because he wants to marry some woman," Esme summarized as she sipped from her glass, fingering the garish-patterned scarf about her neck overlaying her ever-present mismatched attire.

Ian often teased her about needing to advertise her “super serious” artistic profession as a sculptor. Esme said that the wealthy, pretentious patrons were more likely to shell out the serious dough for artists who looked the part. She had once shown up at a gallery covered in clay and paint, wearing plaid flannel overalls, neon green patent leather boots, and an acrylic fur ushanka and sold her most expensive piece to a man in a bespoke suit within five minutes of shaking his hand. Of course, it helped that Esme was a critically-acclaimed artist and that her fiery personality and unapologetically foul mouth only served to make her more intriguing to gallery patrons and potential buyers. You could be a complete asshole, as long as your work was good.

"No," Ian sighed impatiently, absently taking his wine glass. "We're not getting divorced because he's marrying someone else. Well, I mean, we are, but we wouldn't have even realized there was a divorce to be had if he wasn't getting married...remarried or whatever, in the first place."

"So I'm guessing because my phone hasn't been ringing off the hook all afternoon that you haven't told Mama and Daddy yet. What about Christian?"

"You're the first person I've told."

"Well, this is going to be fun,” Esme quipped sarcastically. “Our Roman Catholic parents already had to deal with having two gay kids. Now they're going to have two gay  _divorced_  kids. It's like we're  _trying_ to kill them."

"You’re not really helping things here, Esme."

"Oh, sorry." She had the decency to look somewhat chastised.

"But don't tell Mom and Dad until I figure out how to tell them."

"Fine by me. They kill messengers at our house. So what are you going to do about Will?"

Ian exhaled audibly and rubbed a hand over his eyes. One thing he could say for his twin sister: she didn’t pull her punches. "I don't know. I suppose I don't really have to do much of anything. Just sign some papers, and the lawyers will take care of everything else. We won't even have to see each other ever again if we don't want to."

"And you don't want to?"

"God, I don't know. Yeah. I guess. I don't know." Ian threw up a hand in agitation and nearly lost his full glass. He set it carefully on the coffee table in front of him.

"These aren't difficult questions, Ian."

"Yeah, they kinda are. If I see him, if I even speak to him, I'm opening up....” Ian let out a sigh that seemed to deflate him and cause him to sink impossibly deep into the couch, as if solid surfaces had transformed into quicksand. He drew up his knees protectively and rested the soles of his feet against the edge of the table. He leaned his head back against the couch cushions and stared up into space. “But what he did, Esme,” Ian said quietly to the ceiling, sounding suddenly tired. “I could never reconcile what he did with the person I knew. How could I ever trust him again?”

"He could've sent his lawyer to your workplace to thrust some papers in your hand,” Esme reminded him gently. “He was doing you a huge courtesy to put his pride aside to come and see you in person after everything that happened. And you said it yourself that he was bowled over with apologies."

"Well, he's about ten years too late."

"Better late than never," Esme shrugged. "And it's not as if you tried to reach out to him three years ago when you found out he was back here."

Ian sat up straighter at that. "He's the one who pushed me out of his life, okay.” Ian jabbed at the air with an accusing finger. “I tried to hold on for _three years_  until I realized my efforts were futile and I was trying to resuscitate something that had died a long time ago."

"Yeah, but what if he's trying to make up for the past now? And more importantly, did you ever consider why he suddenly flaked out on you? You guys were practically inseparable once. I remember the way he carried you through Daddy's stroke. People don't just change overnight, Ian,” Esme explained pragmatically, amber eyes flintily trained on his. “And if they do, they usually have a damn good reason." It was as if she was the good twin  _and_  the bad one.

“Maybe I would have cared about his reasons once, but it’s too late now.”

"Oh, my god. Men are such  _fucking_ babies,” Esme muttered with a roll of her eyes. Esme really liked to say  _fuck_. “So why am I here then,” she demanded.

"It's been a long time, Esme. More time has passed than we ever knew each other before. We could be strangers with nothing in common except our shared past. I don't think I could handle the disappointment of finally getting a chance for closure only to be left even more disappointed than I was before.”

"If you brought me over here to talk you out of your guilt over making a dumbfuck decision, you’re shit out of luck. You do what you gotta do, Ian. But at the end of your life which do you think is worse: the what-ifs or the never-should-haves? It's all about what you think you can live with."

Ian retrieved his glass and took a healthy drink. “And what if it’s all for naught,” he asked into his Bordeaux goblet.

"You'll never know until you try."

"Are you just gonna throw out one cliché after another, hoping one sticks?"

Esme shrugged, unconcerned. She gently pushed Lola's head from her lap as she stood from the couch and reached for her discarded shoes. “Well, you can sit here all night and contemplate how fucking pathetic you are, for all I care. Tori’s at the house watching the boys, and I have two kids to put to bed and about six dozen more gluten-free cookies and vegan brownies to bake for the bake sale and ticket raffle tomorrow.”

“What is it this time for our local celebrity-hero? Another feminist hug-in for the local women’s shelter? Scholarships for eco-nazi musical theater kids’ summer camp,” Ian mocked.

Esme flipped her brother the bird. In their town, she was known as much for her art as she was for her activism and leadership in the local community. Ian was one of very few to see to the heart of the free-spirited force of nature she was to discover a surprisingly conventional mother of two little boys, who was perfectly content to collect muffin recipes and shuffle her kids back and forth between swimming lessons and little league games.

“It’s for a middle school arts program. They’ve cut yet more funding from the budget. Fucking uncultured Neanderthals. Oh, I almost forgot. Here,” she said, removing a photo packet from her bag and throwing it on the coffee table. “The photos from the Equality Texas rally you missed.”

Ian opened the packet and glanced at the first few pictures. There, in all her queer-feminist-liberal-soccer mom glory was the suburban exotic bird that was Esme Carlisle-Grant, accompanied by two mop-headed little boys brandishing picket signs, covered in tiny food-encrusted hand prints, protesting gay marriage bans and calling for more effective anti-bullying legislation.

“You pulled the kids out of school again?”

“It’s called the school of life, bro-bro," Esme smiled proudly. "They need both to thrive in this crazy fucked-up world and to help dismantle the sexist heteronormative patriarchal paradigm that has plagued this country since its inception,” she lectured with a tone that was quite clearly tongue-in-cheek, although she meant every word.

Ian smiled bitter-sweetly, thinking about how much Will would have loved his crazy sister and regretting that they never had a chance to really know each other before. Then he realized another thing about time. It was an incredible thing. It made memory, the details, fuzzy even when the feelings remained, like two competing sets of images flashing erratically across a video screen. Even as he remembered the pain he felt at Will’s betrayal, he could recall all of the good times, too. He remembered the warmth and laughter, the comfort and ease with which they co-existed in the same space. Two symbiotic organisms enhancing each other’s survival. Now that he was much older, Ian realized that his friendship with Will had been one of the most fulfilling and sustaining of his life, and the loss of it had crushed him in a way he had yet to fully admit even to himself. Ian tossed the photos away from him and finished the last of his wine in one, long swallow.

“How long did it take you to get over him the first time,” Esme inquired, turning toward Ian, hand on the front door knob.

“I don't know. A few years.”

“Okay, so, you're just gonna go back to your life and wait around for another few years until you get back to where you were and the pain was manageable? And you're gonna tell me that you're honestly okay with that?” Ian glared unhappily at his sister. “That’s what I thought,” Esme retorted smugly as she kissed the top of Lola's head and exited through the front door. “And get some rest. You look like shit.”

Lola sat next to the door and whined as Ian pouted inwardly. That dog was such a  _traitor_. And he would show Esme. Maybe he would just sit on his decision for as long as possible, make Will come to him and delay the inevitable until the situation was exacerbated, maximally uncomfortable, and all but an act of god made him move his feet. Esme was right. Men were fucking babies. He recalled a quote by Havelock Ellis: _All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of holding on and letting go_. But the problem remained: to what should he cling and of what should he let go?

***

“Well, that was...uh...it really  _was_ ,” Christian wavered as he strolled across the little parking lot.

“Holy shit, I know,” Ian agreed, laughing uneasily and running both hands through his bronzed hair.

“So that was William Shakespeare’s _Titus Andronicus_ , the play so bad that Shakespearean scholars have been trying for centuries to disprove its authorship.”

Ian smiled indulgently at Christian’s obsessive need to research before attending whatever exhibit or symposium or play Ian had talked Christian into accompanying with him. Christian would not stand for being considered not among the more knowledgeable in any room.

“Well, it wasn’t originally set within the Mayan Empire. Or intended to be performed completely nude....”

“I think that gave it a little extra something, don’t you,” Christian laughed good-naturedly.

“God, I’m so sorry. It was dreadful, I know. That’s the last time I drag you with me to watch experimental theater in a basement,” Ian effused, looking mortified.

“Oh, I don’t know. It was like watching a sixteenth-century version of a summer action blockbuster. Or maybe a horror. And the blood looked so real! It was so bad....”

“It was almost good?”

“ _Almost_.”

“I’ll never understand how that happens,” Ian commented to himself with a shake of his head.

“That final scene reminded me of some family dinners at my father’s house. Only slightly less bloody,” Christian joked. “It must have triggered a Pavlovian response in me because now I’m feeling famished.”

“We could go to Lily’s,” Ian suggested. “They have a steak sandwich you’d really like, and I can still eat vegetarian.”

“Another one of your local hipster dives that looks like it’s set in a closet or your grandmother’s living room?”

“It's called personality. And I believe in supporting local businesses," Ian defended.

“So do I. That’s why I’m taking you to Uri’s. Trust me. Eating there is an existential experience.”

Ian scrunched up his face in distaste. “Is that that place with the gold leaf truffle foie gras burger? That’s not a restaurant. That’s a one pecenters’ douchebag club.”

“That’s one of the reasons I fell for you, Ian. You are not impressed nor intimidated by money in the slightest. But maybe you could put aside your pigheaded masculine pride and socialist snobbery for just long enough to let me spoil you for a change. You owe me for tonight,” Christian reminded him as he opened the passenger door, silently urging Ian to climb inside.

Ian always felt a bit like an asshole riding around in a car that cost more than his home, motorcycle, and the vast majority of his possessions combined. But he had to admit, it was a cool fucking car. It was a James Bond car! And Christian, as protective of it as he was, had let Ian drive it once, even if he had held his breath the entire time, grasping at the door panel with a vise grip, and making underhanded comments about Ian’s driving. Ian grumbled unhappily as he by-passed his black and chrome Honda GL1800 Gold Wing and slid onto the buttery leather of the passenger seat of Christian’s Mariana blue Aston Martin.

Even now, Christian struggled to let go of his ingrained reflex to buy his lovers’ love. He was a generous, charming, and brilliant man, and he spread his wealth around with a lack of pretension but with what Ian felt was a horrifying cavalierness that spoke of a lifetime of privilege, which had accustomed him to be unconscious of price tags. After Christian had taken them on an extravagant first date complete with the finest dining and a yacht ride, Ian had refused to go on a second one until Christian could tell him what a gallon of gasoline and a carton of milk cost. Christian appeared at his doorstep a week later with hand-picked flowers and a couple receipts in his hand and announced, “Two-dollars and eighty three cents and two dollars and seventy nine cents, respectively.” Their second date had been a low-key picnic with handmade sandwiches in the park. Ian had let Christian take him home that night and, for the first time since they had met, did not leaving Christian standing alone and befuddled on his front porch.

“If it’s a great burger you’re looking for, then we can go to Burger Babes,” Ian suggested as he fasted his seat belt. “Their burgers aren’t gold-encrusted, but they will still give you a food O.”

Christian sighed with exasperation, but he started the car and pulled out onto the street in the direction of the Lower End.

***

“All right. I’m not above admitting when I’ve been proven wrong,” Christian confessed as he handled his Kobe-style trimmings burger with truffled Italian cheese on rosemary focaccia with garlic aioli and zucchini straws. “The food is not only delicious, it’s interesting and even passionately made.”

“See? You  _can_ have a good meal for under a hundred bucks.”

They sat out on the patio with a couple of beers to accompany their meals. Ian had ordered a vegetarian made with eggplant and falafel and topped with a spicy pepper relish and a refreshingly crunchy cucumber, yogurt, and red cabbage salad. He moaned appreciatively as he took another bite and allowed his eyelids to drop and his torso to sway a bit as he chewed. Christian smiled around his beer bottle as he sipped, secretly enjoying Ian’s little ritual food dance. The early evening had warmed considerably, and the wind had calmed from a violent torrent into a balmy breeze.

“It’s turning into a lovely night,” Ian observed aloud, taking a long draw from his beer as his gaze roamed over the tanned flesh of Christian’s forearms and chest peaking out from the collar of his crisp white shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow and tucked into the linen trousers encasing his long legs. The breeze lifted at his blond hair, throwing wisps-- turned to gold by the setting sun-- across his forehead. And Ian wanted to drink him in too as Christian sat there, looking the embodiment of healthy, warm Southern nights. Ian shifted in his seat as his pants tightened and a low-simmering arousal bloomed deep within his belly.  

“It has,” Christian agreed, a lazy smile forming at his thin, well-formed mouth as he worked up a pleasant buzz.

“Remember all that crazy weather we had when we first met?”

Christian hummed in the affirmative. It had been two and a half years ago, when Ian had been fulfilling a guest lectureship in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in the north central part of the state. The last official day of winter had boasted temperatures of nearly eighty degrees, only to snow the very next day.

“I was rooming with that other guest lecturer, Oliver, from Germany.” The man had said that his two months in North Texas had been the most terrifying of his entire life. According to Oliver, they only had regular ol’ snow and rain in Germany. “I thought he was going to shit his pants when he saw the sky turn green and heard the tornado sirens. Then there was that thunderstorm with the golf ball-sized hail.” Christian nodded, his eyes dancing with amusement. “All in a couple of weeks,” Ian chuckled.

“I remember that the thunder was so loud it rattled the windows.”

“One night, I found Oliver hiding in the closet, sobbing."

“I remember,” Christian laughed. "I was with you.”

“That’s right,” Ian nodded. “You’d stalked me to work in your fancy car all the way from the coffee shop that morning and then showed up that night, looking like a blond Cary Grant in  _That Touch of Mink_ , to walk me home from campus.”

Christian mirrored Ian’s warm smile, his voice warming considerably as he met his lover’s eyes across the table. “That was the first time we kissed."

“I remember hoping for more,” Ian grinned, sliding a fingertip through the droplets of moisture forming across the glass of his beer bottle.  

“So was I.” Christian’s posture was casual with his arm thrown over the back of his chair and his legs stretched far out in front of him under the table, but his grey eyes were molten. “As I recall, I was just about to invite myself in when we heard that lightning crack.”

“You tackled me to the porch! You thought it had struck the house,” Ian laughed. “And then we heard all that screaming. Poor guy had shut himself up with every pillow and cushion in the little house, grasping a hockey stick, of all things. He begged me to sleep in his bed with him that night.”

Christian raised an eyebrow. “And I went home alone,” he added with displeasure.

“You got the better deal, believe me. Oliver snored, and his toenails were like  _daggers_.”

“And then a few months later you were offered the adjunct position here.”

“And we finally had our first official date.”

They sat in comfortable silence for a few moments, exchanging smiles and glances.

“What made you think of that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ian said, now picking at the label on his beer bottle. “This week’s got me thinking a lot about the past, I guess.”

“Anything in particular?”

“You could say that,” Ian prevaricated with a tone that held more promise than his words allowed. Christian waited for Ian to continue. “I got an interesting phone call this week.”

“Did you?” Christian remained patient but unwavering. He never overtly pushed for the information he wanted, but rather let it slowly unfold before him as he ever so slightly leaned forward, his body language silently pressing for more.

“Do you remember me telling you about my college roommate, Will?”

Christian’s eyes slid sideways, trying to recall. “Ah, yes,” he said, light dawning. “The wayward roommate,” he added in a pejorative tone.

Ian prised the lime wedge from the neck of his beer and played with it, sliding it around in the moisture gathered at the base of the bottle. “He called me up earlier this week and invited me for coffee.”

Christian raised an understated brow. “All of a sudden? That must have come as quite a surprise.”

“You have no idea,” Ian said under his breath.

Christian said nothing for a moment, his tone and expression were neutral as he resettled himself comfortably in his chair, sipping the last of his beer and reaching for the new one waiting next to the empty on the table. “And what did the prodigal friend have to say?"

Ian huffed out a single, cheerless laugh. “Well, that’s where it gets really interesting.” Ian took a breath.

***

Christian waited for the punchline that never came. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, you heard me right. I’ve been an unwittingly married man for the last ten plus years.”

Christian was leaning heavily onto the table now. “And how did this happen again?” Ian had to hand it to Christian, who was valiantly trying to hold onto his composure.

“Two words: substance abuse and Vegas.”

Christian rubbed a hand over his mouth and fixed his boyfriend with a stare. “That's three words, and I thought you said he was straight.”

Ian laughed. “That’s your question? He is. He’s marrying a woman.”

“Not so much as a ‘how do you do’ for years, and then he calls up asking for a divorce. I hope he treats his wife better.” Christian’s tone was teasing, but his eyes were flinty and his body language signaled that he was much less relaxed than just minutes before. “You’re going to need a lawyer.”

“I’d thought of that.” Ian watched his lover closely.

“I’ll give mine a call tomorrow morning,” Christian offered, leaning back in his seat once more and leisurely finishing off his drink.

“Thank you,” Ian breathed out, looking relieved now that the news had been delivered.

They paid the check then before Christian drove Ian back to the theater to retrieve his bike. The car ride was silent and seemingly amiable as they listened to an evening jazz program on the car radio.

“So is that it then,” Christian asked as Ian reached for the door handle. “Are you going to see him again?”

Ian slumped back in his seat. “That’s exactly what Esme wanted to know.”

If Christian was displeased with Ian for telling his sister before him, he did not show it except for a momentary, nearly-imperceptible tightening in his jaw. “And what did you tell her?”

“That I didn’t know. Things weren’t exactly amiable between us the last time we spoke,” Ian understated. “But he did apologize for being such an asshole all those years ago.”

Christian's frown was morphing into a sneer. “That hardly fixes things.”

“That’s what I said to Esme. She said I never gave him a chance to explain himself before.”

“She’s more forgiving than I would be.”

“That’s Esme. She may act like a hardass, but she’s a bleeding heart all over.” Ian leaned across the center console then and kissed Christian goodnight, effectively signalling that the conversation was over for now. Christian slid his hand around Ian’s neck as he pulled back, keeping his face close. “What is it?”

“I love you,” Christian said against his lips.

“Ditto,” Ian answered, once more sliding his lips across Christian’s mouth, leaning deep into it, letting the tip of his tongue come into play a little as he teased Christian’s mouth until Christian hummed appreciatively in response and slid his fingers into Ian’s hair. Then Ian slid away. Christian held onto his arm, willing him to stay just a little longer. “I can’t,” Ian smiled regretfully. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Ian promised, slipping his fingers from Christian’s grasp, and exited the car.

***

“So, with Charlotte taking twelve weeks of parental leave and essentially giving up on her career ambitions in the process, I could be given the Bloomsbury account," Marin prattled along excitedly from the kitchen as Will all but ignored her from his place on the sofa. "It would allow me to spend some time with my parents in London for the first time in five years. On the company’s expense, no less. It would put me out of the country for Thanksgiving, but I’d be back in time for Christmas...." The clattering of dishes accompanied her happy chatter.

"Mar, I told you I would take care of this dishes. You cooked dinner. You shouldn't have to do that." 

Will scratched his head in irritation as he searched for some lost notes he had made earlier in the day. They were a few weeks away from a regroundbreaking at the park site, and he had never felt less ready as he wallowed in silent doubts that they would be able to avoid the pratfalls that had plagued the previous architects. Will was usually so organized. He was the kind of man who got things done, and here he was falling apart at the very first of a project before the real work could even begin. He did not know where his mind was at.

"And seeing as you recently acquired a large account of your own, the timing really couldn’t be more perfect!" Marin rambled, oblivious. "If all goes well, I could be in line for the senior account executive position. Darling?” Marin poked her head out of the kitchen when Will remained silent. “Did you hear a word I said?”

“No. Uh, I mean, that’s great, hon,” Will answered distractedly from his place on the sofa.

Marin walked to the living room in her stockinged feet, a martini glass in each hand. She set one glass on the coffee table in front of Will as he held his cell to his ear with one shoulder and rifled through a few messy stacks of paper spread out on the coffee table, which were quickly morphing into a single, disastrous heap. “Sweetheart,” Marin sighed with practiced patience, fingering the new gold and diamond solitaire pendant at her neck-- a gift from Will. “This is what your office is for.”

“I’m just checking my messages real quick. Could you get me my electronic sketch pad from my bag? It’s on the bench in the foyer.” Marin pursed her lips in displeasure as she turned from the room. “It’s in the outside pocket,” Will threw over his shoulder as he picked up his glass. “What the hell is this,” he choked out.

“Chocolate martini,” Marin called from the entryway. “Don’t you like it?”

“It’s revolting.”

Another sheet of paper followed out the slender leather zip case as Marin pulled it from the bag and landed at her feet. “How about margaritas then?”  

“Do we have tequila?”

“No, but I’m certain this place does.” Will turned toward Marin as she entered the room holding up a bright pink sheet of paper. “It looks like they’re having Latin dancing tonight at some place called El Tropicana.” Will glowered doubtfully. He  _knew_ he should have thrown that blasted flyer away. “Oh, come on,” Marin quickly intercepted Will’s objections. She slid onto his lap and threw her arms around his neck. “It could be fun, and you’ve been promising me a night out for weeks. I know it’s a bit hypocritical to complain about the fact that we’ve hardly seen one another since you got the new account, but at this rate, you’re going to work yourself into the ground before you even reach the groundbreaking. And we never did celebrate your latest success.”

Will could admit that he had been especially unavailable lately. He had been practically living at work, only going home to change clothes, eat, and sleep. Sometimes not even then. He had made himself a promise a long time ago to never again make promises he could not keep, and he had faltered on that promise. Lately, he had felt as if he was slowly losing his mind, and he knew he needed to step away from everything, if only to take a moment to breathe.

“All right,” Will relented, kissing her on the nose.

“Eee! I’ll go freshen up.” Marin squealed excitedly and clapped her hands as she rushed from the room and up the stairs. “I can wear my new red dress!”

***

With its tropical, Latin flare, El Tropicana was a kind of retro tribute to the beach resort clubs of the 1960s. It stood at the edge of the Arts District, a belovedly-restored relic standing vigil at the gates of the Lower End. The club boasted a quaint open lobby and bar with potted palms, circular red leather booths, and a little tiled stream complete with mosaic fish, which ran the length of the wooden floor, separating the restaurant from the downstairs bar. The club was already alive with lights, laughter, and music when Will and Marin arrived.    

“You look amazing in that dress,” Will whispered to Marin, who was wearing a short, ruffled red satin number that complemented her flame-hued hair and strappy gold stilettos.

“Thank you for noticing,” Marin smiled sweetly. With a hand to the small of her back, Will led them through the outer entrance to the old-fashioned coat check desk in the lobby.

“Good evening,” the baby-faced hostess greeted them sincerely. “Would you like a table in the main dining room or are you just here for the dancing.” The hostess sported a bouffant flip dyed a kool-aid red at the tips and a black mini cocktail dress with a flare skirt, complete with a matching checkered pillbox hat and apron and a metal-plated name tag that read  _Hedy_. Will smirked at that.

“Were your parents Hedy Lamarr fans,” Will asked the hostess.

“Yes, my mom is,” Hedy dimpled with a genuine smile as she took their coats. “And you get total cool points for knowing who she is.”

“My college roommate was obsessed with her and Greta Garbo. I’ve probably seen every film she ever made at least twice. My favorite is probably _Angel and the Badman_.”

“ _Lady of the Tropics_. I just love old movies with exotic locations.” Hedy was practically effervescent. “Can I get you a table then?”

“I’m here for the dancing, but my fiancé is probably only here for the margaritas,” Marin dished.

“You missed the tutorial on the patio,” Hedy informed them. “But they usually have some exhibition dances afterward. You won't want to miss those. Regular margaritas are three dollars, and the dance floor is open until one A.M.” She finished her pitch with another saccharin grin, and Will wondered if he had ever been that young and innocent and carefree. The couple moved through the inner entrance to be swallowed up in the din of chatter, clinking glasses, and shuffling feet, underscored by the distant music drifting down to them from the rooftop patio.

“I didn’t know you liked Hedy Lamarr,” Marin said.

“I guess I didn’t remember until now.”

They each ordered a margarita before making their way up the steps to the roof. As they cleared the glass doors and emerged onto the patio, the music stopped, and people began to clear the floor. Will looked around for an empty seat at the rooftop bar or one of the small bar tables lining the circumference of the dance floor, but every table appeared to be fully occupied. Will sighed inwardly, and joined Marin at the very edge of the floor.

“This is so exciting! I wonder what kind of dance they’ll be performing tonight.”

“I wonder if they’ll be any good,” Will mumbled, chewing on the end of his black cocktail straw.

“Stop that,” Marin admonished, slapping his arm gently.

“Stop what? I’m just standing here, drinkin’ my drink.”

Marin rolled her eyes. “No, you’re trying to find a reason to not like the place so that you can leave. And you only chew on your straw when you’re feeling acutely petulant or particularly snarky. What’s with you lately? You’re so  _grumpy_.”

Will did not know what was wrong with him. By all accounts, his life was going his way at the moment, but he had not felt right in weeks. And ever since he had spoken with Ian, he had felt glum and pessimistic, and he had no idea where his feelings were coming from. He had not seen or spoken with Ian since that day. Was it guilt over not coming clean with Marin about his clandestine marriage? Was it his persistent guilt over the way things had happened between him and Ian? He had apologized, and Ian had seemed to be willing to accept his apology. Will had thought he would feel relief at finally shedding the burden of Ian’s unforgiveness, but now he felt only restless and irritable. He just wanted to go home and work until he collapsed into bed.

The stage was absent of a band, but a DJ stood behind a DJ booth with a Macbook, a turntable, and his huge headphones as the lights dimmed and a spotlight appeared on the center of the empty dance floor. The music began, but the floor remained empty for several bars, building suspense amongst the crowd as the first, soft heartbeat of the bass began to thrum out a raunchy remix of De Phazz’s "Good Boy." Bum-bum...ba-da-da-da bum-bum...ba-da-da-da, the music pounded in a sultry tempo with what sounded like a human gasp thrown in. And on it went until a lone male figure appeared on the far side of the floor. His white shirtsleeves were rolled up in a casual style, the buttons undone to his chest, and a black fedora tilted low over his eyes, casting his face in shadow. Then to the opposite end of a dance floor, just a few feet from where Will was standing, a leggy blond appeared in a black satin dress with dual slits up each side. As the pair met eyes across the floor, the spotlight cast down deep blues and purples in a smokey veil, under which exposed skin seemed even more bare and the woman’s red-painted lips and the red dahlia in her pinned up hair glowed with an iridescent blood. A whispery scratching echoed over the bass beat, and a single raunchy  _whaw_ of a guitar rang out as the woman took her first hesitant step toward the man. And then the pounding heartbeat of the percussion joined in, followed seconds later by the second guitar echoing the rhythm of the first, as the woman continued slowly across the dance floor with a sensuous sway of her hips. She moved in time to the pulse of the triple heartbeat grinding out an erotic syncopated rhythm, ratcheting up the heat from a slow burn to a palpable blue blaze. Bum-step bum-grind bum-bum, the woman sang out with her body. With a forward extended arm and a figure-eight swivel-dip of her hips, she beckoned to the man, who answered her call.

They circled one another in a predatory movement before crashing together on a dual lunge in a fierce  _abrazo_. The man threw her away from him, the momentum of his hold on her hand spun her back into his arms as they dropped into a deep lunge once more, all primal movement. The woman moved flush against her partner, stepping between his legs as she hooked her leg sharply around his, and he lifted her in a rotating step, dipping her back. She extended one leg up behind him, stretching her neck out, eyes closed in ecstasy as they held their position. He spun her around, pulling her back possessively against his chest. He ran his hands down the side of her body and lifted her hands into position before leading her across the floor in a kind of forward facing promenade.

“Wow,” Marin gasped beside him, grabbing at Will's arm. “They’re amazing!” Will had to admit. They were pretty good.

The man lifted his partner up, and she kicked her legs out in a split as he carried her through another rotation. He continued to turn as she hooked both of her legs around one of his. When her legs came down, he slid her across the floor on the tips of her toes, before she stopped his motion with a backward hook of her leg. He spun her away from him once more, releasing her with an ardent rejection and turning away from her. She lunged forward and threw her arms around him, pressing her face to his back and grasping the front of his shirt with desperate fingers, begging him to stay. When he remained cold to her plea, she caressed the outside of his leg with hers, trying to seduce him into bending to her will.

It was so intimate, Will thought. He felt warmth rising up his neck and flooding his cheeks, almost embarrassed at first to watch the man and woman dancing together in such a way. He wondered if they were real lovers. He could not imagine dancing with anyone in public that way, even Marin. Any moment, he expected the man to rip off the woman’s clothes and ravage her on the dance floor in front of all of these people. Will almost started with surprise at the slash of arousal that cut right through him then. He looked around surreptitiously, wondering if Marin or anyone else had noticed, wondering if there was anyone else who was affected in such a way. But he could not keep his eyes away from what was happening on the floor for long.

The man slid a hand up the woman’s bare thigh, forcefully pushing it off of him. He grasped her by the back of her neck, forcing her to step away and drop to one knee, in a position of pleading supplication. He moved a gentle hand to her cheek, running a thumb over her mouth. When the woman turned to leave him, he grasped her wrists, spinning her back to him and sliding a possessive hand from her face down her body. Their tango was a fierce push and pull, a passionate lovers quarrel played out on the dance floor. When he cut across her feet and pulled her to him fervently, she pushed against his chest to let her go. When he released her, she clung to him with a draping of her arms over his shoulders or a whip of a leg over his.

The man lead his partner across the floor in a classic walking pattern, embellishing their movements with slow rocking lock steps and sharp little side lunges, in a stuttering stop and start that felt almost violent in its urgency. Their pace rapidly increased, smoothing out their glide across the floor in sweeping foot motions and gentle caresses and slides of one leg over another. The basic tango embrace faltered as he lead her by a grasping of her wrist or a clutching of her hand against his heart. It was an intensely raw and orgiastically passionate display, and Will felt increasingly swept up in the story playing out before him.

The woman was a beautiful dancer. Gorgeous, sexy, great legs. But Will could not take his eyes off of the man. He was a commanding presence. There was a graceful strength, a sensual power in the way he moved. So much confidence in the way he lead his partner, Will simmered with envy. He imagined women practically threw their panties at him after seeing him dance. If he could move like that, Will thought, maybe he would take Marin dancing every weekend.  

The woman draped back over her partner’s shoulder, one leg extended in the air above their heads, as he spun them. The audience gasped when he threw his partner over his other shoulder, rolling her entire rotating body across the back of his shoulders, like a spinning pinwheel over his back, and catching her in his arms. When he released her, she slid down his body to the floor at his feet, and he sank into a deep lunge with their mouths so close together, they almost touched. The song was over, and the crowd was stunned silent for a moment, clearly affected by the emotion of the dance-play before they erupted into cheers and applause. The man carefully lifted his partner from the floor, holding onto her hand as they bowed. He tipped his hat back from his face then, smiling and nodding in humble appreciation.

Will’s jaw dropped, his heart doing a little stutter-step of its own.  _Holy shit_. The man was Ian.


	4. The Merry Wives of Windsor Park

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will approaches Ian at the club, Ian tries to smooth things over with Christian, and nosy neighbors hatch hackneyed plans, which may force the truth of Ian and Will's marriage into the light.

" _Holy Mama!_  See? Now _that’s_  what I’m talking about,” said a young woman from directly behind Will. “That’s the kind of man even other men take a second look at.”

"I believe those other men are called _gay_ men, Dee,” said the tall black man standing beside her.

"Even some of the straight ones, too, I bet. Excuse me,” said the woman, tapping on Will’s shoulder.

Will tossed back a glance toward the couple. “Uh, you talking to me,” he asked, pointing a finger to himself.

“Yeah, I’m talkin’ ta you,” the petite, curly-haired woman with the freckles sprinkled over her nose laughed at herself and what Will guessed was meant to be a Robert De Niro impression. _Oookaaay_. “I have a theory, and maybe you can help me with it.”

“Here we go,” undervoiced the man with an affected sigh and a roll of his eyes.

The woman shot her companion an evil glare. “ _Anyway_. I have a theory that some human specimens are so irresistible, so sexually potent, that they defy all sexual boundaries.”

Will glanced toward the man with round eyes that said, _"_ Is she serious?"

“They can reduce men and women alike to their basest animalistic instincts and chemical reactions, regardless of gender or sexual orientation.”

"I know, man, but just go with it," signaled the man with a shake of his head.

“Like that sexy-ass man over there,” she said pointing toward the dance floor.

“Uh...I don’t know,” Will said coloring.

“I don’t mean that a comfortably heterosexual male is going to suddenly jump right into bed with another man. But I do think that it’s what might cause one person to be drawn to another, to desire a person to connect with another, to emulate their behavior, to seek out friendship with them.”

"I looked," said the man with a shrug. “I’m secure enough in my sexuality to admit it. You’d have to be to be with her,” he said smiling proudly, pointing a thumb to the woman next to him.

“Delilah Torres,” said the curvy brunette with a wide smile. Will took the hand she offered. “And this beautiful, dumb man is my boyfriend, Clarke Washington.”

The men gave each other the guy nod before shaking hands.

“I’d have to be dumb to be with a woman like her.”

Delilah elbowed him in the side.

“I’m Will Bloom, and this is...uh....” Will looked all around him. “My fiancée seems to have disappeared.”

“Maybe she’s with all the other women, trying to get a piece of Latin Patrick Swayze over there. Maybe Mr. Dirty Dancing can get you to move like that, Clarke!”

“In your dreams, babe,” Clarke scoffed. “Because I’ve only got rhythm when I’m lying down.”

“You are so crude,” Delilah scowled adorably.

“You love me,” Clarke retorted breezily.

“Never you mind about that.”

Will smiled at the young couple as he looked off toward the dance floor and felt the color drain from his face.  _Oh, fuck me_. There was Marin, talking with Ian. Ian said something then, and Marin laughed, laying a hand on his arm and looking utterly charmed.

“Babe, it’s not that I don’t trust _you_ ,” Clarke was saying. “I don’t trust other men to keep their hands to themselves.”

“ _Bullshit_. Your argument is moot anyway. He’s gay.”

“How do you know?”

“He hasn’t given a single woman in here a second look all night.”

“Oh, in that case, I’ll take whatever class he’s teaching.”

"You are so sexist!"

"Now how is that...I can be objectified by other men if I want to, Dee! You don't always get to be the pretty one."

Delilah's scowl melted into giggles.

Will was frozen in place as Delilah and Clarke argued amiably beside him. As if on cue, Ian looked up and met Will’s eyes. Ian’s face flashed briefly with surprised recognition but was soon replaced with that slightly-wounded indefinable look Will had seen in his eyes when they were at the cafe. Will imagined it spoke of all the things left unspoken between them for the last decade and perhaps even before. In that moment, Will wanted nothing more than for Ian to look at him the way that he used to all those years ago, the look that made him feel that everything would be all right because even when the world seemed to be spinning too fast, threatening to leave him behind, he could always rely on and find comfort in his certainty that Ian would remain the one constant in his life. And then Ian turned away, attention drawn by a tall, blond woman at his arm, who was introducing him to a small group of smiling females pressing up around him, looking positively predatory.

***

Ian stepped out into the pleasantly warm night, filling his lungs with the blessedly open air. He was beginning to feel claustrophobic in there. To say he’d been surprised to see Will was an understatement. He had managed to avoid running into Will for the last two years, and suddenly, his old friend seemed to be everywhere. He struggled with the decision of whether or not he should feign to be the bigger man and approach Will, but when he had looked back to where Will had been standing, he was gone. _He probably ran for it._  It would suit the precedent, after all. He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed. Christian's voice met him on the other end of the line, and Ian felt like crying with relief.

“What’d you forget this time?”

“Hey,” Ian said softly.

“Hey, yourself,” Christian answered around a yawn. He sounded warm and cozy, and Ian had the overwhelming urge to crawl into bed beside him and soak up some of that warmth until his world felt right again.  

“I’m so sorry. I’m an asshole. I didn’t even ask if you were okay earlier tonight. I thought that maybe I’d give you some time to think about things, and I....actually, I don’t know what I was thinking, and you probably just got into bed, but I just wanted...are you okay?”

Christian seemed to need a moment to absorb the rush of words pouring forth from his boyfriend’s mouth. “You mean, are  _we_ okay? Or am I okay with the fact that my boyfriend is married to another man?” Ian emitted a slight, uneasy chuckle. “I’m fine,” Christian assured him. “We’re fine. Aren’t we?”

“God, I hope so,” Ian breathed, full of relief. He could practically hear Christian smiling through the phone.

“Then I’ll see you on Friday. Goodnight, babe,” Christian yawned.

“Goodnight.”

After Christian hung up, the air around Ian felt immediately colder.

“I never knew you could move like that,” Will said from behind him as he stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of El Tropicana.

Ian sighed inwardly. “Yeah, well, there’s a lot you don’t know about me,” he retorted harshly, turning around.

“Touché.” But Will stood there looking timidly expectant rather than deterred.

“My Aunt Ava started teaching me how to dance when I was kid. After she died, I just...lost interest in it,” Ian shrugged. If Will was hoping for a more interesting story, he was shit out of luck.

Something about Ian seemed to catch Will’s acute interest, and he stepped forward. “Whoa,” Will exhaled quietly, pulling Ian’s unbuttoned shirt away from his shoulder to reveal a half-length tattoo sleeve down his left arm. “You have a lot more ink than I remember....”  

***

_“So, I thought we could go the palace theater in Georgetown,” Will said as he waltzed into Ian’s bedroom and took a seat at the foot of his unmade bed. He watched Ian rifle through his closet for a clean shirt to wear out that night. “They’re showing a movie marathon of ten of the best classic monster movies--_ Nosferatu _,_ King Kong _,_ Creature from the Black Lagoon _,_ Bride of Frankenstein _,_ The Thing _.... Oh, and_ Cat People _!”_

_Ian picked up a shirt from the floor and smelled it. He grimaced in disgust and threw it toward his overstuffed laundry basket._ _“Is that that one with the woman who turns into a human-cat hybrid whenever she wants sex?”_

_“That would be the one.” Will pulled his legs up onto the bed and leaning back on his arms. “Your bed is more comfortable than mine,” he frowned covetously._

_“Esme loves that one. She said something about it redefining gender roles and exploring repressed female sexual power. Or something. I think she watched it in her Women in Film class.” Ian smiled to himself in victory when he located a suitably unwrinkled, manstink-free shirt from the floor of his closet._

_“I don’t see how it’s supposed to represent a progressive view of women when the villain turns into a literal feline man-killer whenever she does the deed. Isn't that just harking on feminine stereotypes?"_

_“Yeah, but she gets to decide when she and her husband have sex. You don't think a woman in command of her sexuality was progressive for the 1940's?"_

_"I guess," Will shrugged. "But I always thought_ Cat People _was more about the gay villain archetype. The evil dyke cat lady who goes around seducing men and then evicerating them."_

_Ian's laugh was muffled by his shirt as he pulled it off over his head. "That's probably why Esme likes it then."_

_"Quick, best gay villain archetype!" Will bounced around while sitting on the bed, testing the springs. "It's so soft and supportive...."_

_"Maleficent in_ Sleeping Beauty _, and it's the foam mattress topper."_

_"Ooh, nice one. I think she ties for Ursula in_ The Little Mermaid _."_

_"Does Ursula count as a lesbian villain if she was modelled after a drag queen?"_

_"That is an excellent question."_

_Ian grinned. That was one of the things he most liked about Will. Will never made Ian feel exhausting or insecure by shying away from Ian’s penchant to politicize any topic._

_“Hey, what’s that?”_

_Ian almost jumped when he felt fingertips slide down the back of his upper arm. Ian glanced over his shoulder to where Will’s hands were exploring the tattoo of a single, unlined red poppy blossom._

_“Oh. That.” Ian quickly pulled his new shirt on over his shoulders and then dove back into his closet for clean socks._

_“It’s pretty. It looks like a watercolor. What’s it mean?”_

_“Why does it have to mean anything? Maybe I just thought it looked cool.”_

_Will gave him a disbelieving look before collapsing back onto the bed._ _“Doesn’t really seem like your style. You have depth and shit.”_

_“I got it after my Aunt Ava died of breast cancer when I was seventeen."_

_“I’m sorry,” Will sobered. “You were really close?”_

_“Next to Esme, she was probably my favorite person in the world. I thought she was the most beautiful woman to ever live. She reminded me of all the best of the classic movie stars-- Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Hedy Lamarr, Gene Tierney. I idolized her.” Will smiled, thinking of the kind of little boy Ian must have once been. “My mom always said that I reminded her of Aunt Ava, and I think that scared her, that she was this untamed thing wandering around the world like a nomadic gypsy without roots or a family or a home of her own. I think she was always afraid I’d end up like her. Still is, actually.”_

_Will thought he may have just liked this Aunt Ava person._ _“And you’re not like that?”_

_Ian allowed himself a nostalgic smile then as he buttoned up his clean shirt._ _“Maybe a little. But I’m not as adverse to laying down roots like she was. I could do worse than to emulate her.”_

_“How do you mean?”_

_Ian sighed and collapsed on his back across the bed next to Will._ _“When she came home to die, hospice support set up a hospital bed in the downstairs bedroom in our house, and I would spend hours in there with her everyday-- bringing her flowers from the garden, reading to her, watching old movies, and just talking. At the end of her life, I got to know her in a way very few people ever had. Even my mother, who was her best friend. Aunt Ava lived her life without regrets. When she wanted something, she jumped for it, arms outstretched. No excuses. I don’t think many people can say that. I think most people live lives full of fear. But she was..._ fearless _. She was always so vibrant, so alive, so strong and sure in herself. Even at the end, when she was so frail and she could barely speak and she was asleep far more than she was awake, I think a part of me was still convinced that she was incapable of actually dying. I thought the strength of her spirit and will alone would allow her to cheat death.” Ian swallowed against the lump in his throat._

_Even years later, it still hurt so much to talk about her, and it was a testament to this newfound friend that Ian felt comfortable enough in Will's presence to allow himself to speak so freely. Will hadn’t spoken in awhile, and Ian cursed inwardly, hoping he had not made him uncomfortable. When Ian chanced a look at Will, he saw his roommate looking down at him with a look of pure, unabashed sympathy._

_“So, you got any more ink hidden anywhere?”_

_“Not yet.” Ian cleared his throat and jumped up from the bed. “Why did you let me go on like that? When does this movie marathon start.” Ian walked out of the room to hunt down his favorite pair of blue converse high tops._

_Will stared after him silently, too ashamed that he had almost cried hearing his friend talk about his dead aunt. Ian put on a good front, but he was full of unspoken pain. Will had never had to watch someone he loved die. He lived a life surprisingly free of emotional attachments. There was his older sister, June. And her husband, Ben was a pretty cool guy. But that was about it. And they were not nearly as close as they had once been when they were kids._

_“And rescue you from your own embarrassment? Where’s the fun in that,” Will teased him with far more levity than he felt._

***

A group of college kids walked by in that moment, cutting around and between them, tearing Will away from his reminiscence. Will and Ian exchanged silent glances as the crowd moved with noisy gaiety into the club.

“I hate college towns,” Will bemoaned. “All these young people make me feel  _old_.”

“You’re not even middle aged yet, and college students haven’t changed all that much in the last ten years,” Ian assured him. “Except they’re more tattooed now, and the holes in their ears are a lot bigger. The straight guys have gotten a little gayer, too.”

“Hipsters, man,” Will shook his head ruefully, “making gay guys and gals invisible since 2001. I  _suppose_ I could find the appeal in a socialist music snob who dresses like my grandfather. I remember you used to be particularly fond of cardigans.”

Ian smiled reluctantly at that. “I still like cardigans. And you’ve gotta at least appreciate a subculture movement that crosses borders of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and sexual preference in a way America hasn’t seen since probably the boom of hip-hop culture.”

“Maybe you could teach a lecture about it,” Will offered only somewhat sarcastically and smiled at the thought of the what would be certain to be an interesting class discussion.

And there it was, a spark of what they had once had-- one right note finally landing its perfect pitch. It felt like remembering how to swim-- the two of them, falling into sync once more. But then Ian ruined it.

“So that was your fiancée I met in there,” Ian said, wielding the phrase as a weapon. “The red head? She’s beautiful. She seems very nice. Smart. Funny, too.”

“She’s too good for me,” Will said tritely, and Ian snorted.

“You haven’t told her about us, have you.” Will averted his gaze, and Ian scoffed. “I just want to know why, Will. After what happened in Vegas, you promised nothing would change. I thought we were good. And then you just disappeared on me.” An internal struggle played itself out on Will’s face. “Without any explanation. I had no idea what to think.”

“I don’t know how to answer that,” Will finally replied, meeting Ian’s gaze with defeated eyes. Ian’s entire countenance seem to recoil in disappointment, and it killed Will that he could be the one to cause the light to go out in Ian’s eyes like that.

“Really?” Ian was incredulous. “Eight years later and still nothing. You know what,” Ian said, moving to push past Will. “This was a bad idea. We should just leave everything to the lawyers and stay out of each other’s way.”

Will reached out and grabbed Ian’s shoulder, hard. The sudden halt to his momentum made Ian stumble forward a little. Will reached up and, in an achingly familiar gesture, cupped his hand behind Ian's neck to hold him there, foreheads leaning together. Ian stood stock still, eyes roaming over Will, neither resisting nor encouraging the touch. 

“That’s not what I want,” Will breathed fiercely. He felt desperate. For what, he wasn’t sure. He only knew that he could not bear Ian walking away from him then, not looking like that.  

“Why should I give a  _shit_ about what you want, Will.” But the fight was seeping out of him, and the harshness of Ian’s words fell flat. “If there’s one thing you taught me, it’s that we don’t always get what we want.”

“I’m sorry I...I can’t give you what you want.” Will’s eyes looked wrecked, and Ian almost felt sorry for him. “I wish I could.”

A horn blared in the distance, causing them to jump. Will looked around, suddenly paranoid that they were being observed.

“Ian, are you out here? You just disappeared,” Karina said, stepping out onto the front steps. “Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t realize...oh, it’s you! You helped me catch my wayward flyers the other day.”

“Oh, right. With the green scarf,” Will remembered, stepping away from Ian, self-conscious now that they had an audience.

“I’m glad you could make it. I didn’t realize you two knew one another,” Karina said cheerily, but the look she cast Ian was calculating and said clearly,"We need to talk."

Marin stepped out behind Karina a moment later, eyes searching for Will. “I thought you said you needed to refresh your drink."

“Just getting some fresh air.”

“I see you found your friend. We had a lovely talk earlier. Ian was just telling me that the two of you knew each other at university? That must have been interesting,” Marin said excitedly, trying to open the doors to conversation.

“If Hedy Lamarr marathons could be considered interesting,” Will played along, and Ian raised an eyebrow at him.

“Oh, so this the friend! Maybe I’ll finally get to hear all about your college days. Will doesn't talk much about those days,” she told Ian, who covered a laugh with a cough. Will wouldn’t meet his eyes.  

The foursome stood around exchanging looks until Ian gathered whatever self-preservation instincts he had within him and hardened his heart toward his old friend, standing vulnerable and regretful before him. Ian made his excuses and moved to retreat within the building, Karina following behind him. Will’s stomach felt weighted with rocks.

“Need some company,” Marin offered, descending the handful of steps.

Will scrubbed a hand over his face, feeling suddenly and bone-deeply tired. “No. I’ve had about all the fresh air I can stand. It’s been a long day, and I just want to go home. Is that all right?”

“Of course, babe. Thank you for taking me out tonight. I had a lovely time.”

Will knew she was being kind, but he appreciated her all the more for it. Marin pulled her wrap tighter around her and stepped close to Will to put an arm through his.

“That makes one of us,” Will commented under his breath as they turned toward the parking lot.

***

June Bloom-Wylde drove down Victory Drive toward Ben White Boulevard in her shoreline blue Toyota RAV4. She had stopped at two different stores on her way home from Iris’s softball game to pick up supplies for the eight year old’s history project, which was due tomorrow. Her daughter was giving an oral report on her favorite historical figure and had waited until the very last minute to tell her mother that they were also supposed to dress the part. She would be gluing and sewing homemade flight patches on the Amelia Earhart costume until the wee hours. Thank god she was not on-call at the hospital until tomorrow night.

She had been loading her two girls into the back of the mini SUV in the parking lot of the Target, when her phone had alerted her of an incoming text. Actually, it was a push notification from her brother’s fiancée’s Facebook page. Marin had just checked in at El Tropicana for “a night of Latin music and dancing with Will!!!” Her brother had been practically AWOL for going on six weeks now. Her husband, Ben, had assured her that her brother was not dead, but she would not be satisfied until she witnessed his aliveness with her own eyes. It was just pure, unadulterated concern that had her going a mere few miles out of her way to drive discreetly past the restaurant club.  _Yeah, that’s all it was_ , June rationalized.

“Mom,” Iris sighed from the backseat. “This isn’t the way to our house.”

“How do you know? You’re eight years old. Maybe I’m taking a shortcut.” The little girl rolled her eyes and looked out the window. “I’m just making a quick drive by somewhere,” June explained, checking the GPS to make certain she had made the correct turn.

“I need Princess Patches Strawberry Twirl,” her three year old cried out for her overly-albeit-inventively-monikered unicorn pillow.

“Laurel,” June warned. “I told you at the game, at the store, at the other store, in the bathroom at the store, and in the parking lot at the store that we left it at home. We’ll be there soon, so I don’t want to hear another word about it!” Laurel crossed her arms and poked out a mutinous lip. “Oh, there it is!”

June slowed down to a crawl when she saw a familiar man step outside onto the sidewalk. _Is that...?_  June pulled up to the curb across the street. A couple minutes later, she saw her brother exit the club and approach the other man. She  _knew_ that man looked familiar. He was the one she saw with her brother at the cafe last week. She wished she had had a pair of binoculars then. Maybe she could read their lips and...what was she thinking?! June was beginning to think that this-- spying on her own brother at night with her kids in tow-- might be a tad extreme, even for her. But she had been practicing restraint for so long! It was not her fault Will did not yet understand the full value of family. If it had not been for her persistence and the occasional benign manipulation, she would not have a relationship with her only sibling at all.

June let out small gasp when she saw Will grab the other man and crowd him toward the wall.

“Mom!” June jumped at her daughter’s sudden exclamation, accidentally hitting the car horn. June ducked low in her seat and peered over the edge of the driver’s side window.  _Oh, thank god._  They had not spotted her. “Are you spying again?! ‘Cuz Daddy said that polite people mind their own damn business.”

“And not stinking up their noses where they don’t belong,” Laurel chimed in unhelpfully.

“Sounds like Daddy needs to take his own advice,” June grumbled under her breath. “And don’t say  _damn_. I’m not spying, I’m just...well, we don’t have to tell your dad everything.”

“But  _you_ said that withholding important information is the same thing as lying,” Iris recited.

“So now you suddenly remember everything your parents say? And it’s not lying, it’s just...uh, well...,” June stalled. “We’re just making sure Uncle Will is doing okay because we haven’t seen him in awhile. He just... doesn’t know we’re doing it.”

“It’s sounds like spying to  _me_.” Iris looked unappeased.

“Who wants ice cream on the way home?!”  _  
_

The two little ginger-headed girls exchanged looks in the backseat and seemed to come to a swift and silent consensus before crying out excitedly with a dual “Yay!”

June pulled her vehicle back onto the street. She had some serious intel to gather, even if she had to resort to subterfuge and chicanery to do it.

***

Ian let himself in the front door and punched in the security code. He slipped off his shoes by the welcome mat and made his way through the condo in the darkness, pausing to rub his bare feet against the lush rug in the living room. He slipped off his shirt and dropped it to the floor at the bottom of the staircase and walked silently up the stairs and into the master bedroom. The only sound to emit from the dark quiet was the brief  _zzzz_ of a zipper opening before Ian stepped out of his pants and slipped between the sheets on the king sized bed. He slid his hand down the bare back beside him, eliciting a hum that rose up from the still mass underneath the covers. Ian kissed the back of the man’s neck, savoring the scent of the sleep-warm skin. He slipped a hand around to stroke the taut stomach and moved the hand lower and lower until his fingers slipped under the waistband of the man’s briefs. He wrapped his hand around the hardening length, evoking a gasp from the other man. When Ian began gently stroking the cock in his hand, the man moaned and turned over, seeking out Ian’s mouth. _Mmm. He even tasted sleepy and warm._

“I thought you had an early class tomorrow.” Christian’s voice was deep and sleep-roughened, and Ian’s cock filled at the sexy, gravelly effect of it.

“I do,” murmered Ian with another brief kiss against his lover’s lips.

“Time is it,” Christian mumbled, rubbing at his eyes.

“Ssh,” Ian soothed, pushing at Christian’s chest to keep him from getting up. “It’s half past midnight. Could be later, but I have plenty of time. There’s something I needed to do first before I went home.”

“Wassat,” Christian slurred sleepily, happily settling back against the pillows.

“This.” Ian laid his body over Christian’s and dipped his tongue into his mouth. Christian moaned, his cock leaping between their bellies.

“God, I’ve wanted you all day,” Christian confessed breathily.

“Me too,” Ian whispered against his mouth and pressed his own answering arousal against his hip.

Ian kissed a path down Christian’s neck and across his chest. He could feel the building arousal in Christian's body palpably thrumming and vibrating as he bit and sucked each nipple before sliding his lips down Christian’s torso. Ian pulled at the waistband of Christian’s underwear and buried his face in the warm, silky-soft space of skin between belly and hipbone, where Christian's scent was particularly heady and made Ian want to drown in the scent of his lover's flesh. Ian loved to revel in the expanse of skin stretching from hip to hip, where Christian was particularly sensitive and responsive to Ian's touch. He licked a moist, hot line across that sensuous apex of skin and nipped at it lightly, conjuring a gasp from Christian.

Ian felt restless and desperate to hold onto something safe and familiar. He needed to feel something solid and real, and Christian was the epitome of safe and real to him. Ian trusted that he knew who this man in his arms was, this man whose body was comfortingly familiar now under his mouth and hands. When Ian kissed his lover’s mouth deeply, with his eyes closed tight, he could trust that Christian’s eyes were closed, too. And when he told Christian he loved him, he did so without fear that his lover would one day disappear into the night without a word. Without further preamble, Ian ripped Christian’s underwear down to his thighs and swallowed his cock whole in one swift motion.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Christian choked out, thrusting both hands into Ian’s hair, cradling Ian's head against him.

Ian moaned around his lover’s cock as Christian tugged at his hair and dug blunt fingers and nails into the meaty part of Ian's shoulders and upper back, struggling to hold himself to together against the intense assault of sensations overtaking him. Ian loved when a lover did that, when it hurt just enough to turn him on and remind him that he was as much at his partner’s mercy as his partner was to him. Ian slipped a finger in next to his mouth, slicking it. He pulled off of Christian’s cock and spit on his hole. He swallowed Christian down slowly as he tapped and circled Christian's entrance with a spit-lubed finger, slipping in just a fingertip until Christian moaned in frustration and tugged hard at Ian’s hair in retaliation.

“ _Please_ , baby,” Christian begged. Just as Ian’s lips reached the base of his cock, he sucked hard and breached Christian’s body with his fingers. “Oh, my  _god_ ,” he panted. “I love your sweet mouth.”  

Ian sucked Christian ruthlessly, pounding almost brutally into Christian's ass with his fingers. Christian could do nothing more than pant and moan and hold on for dear life until Ian forced him to give up his come. Christian fisted the sheets and pressed his ass down forcefully, trying to fuck himself harder and faster on his lover’s hand. With a pained, choking cry, Christian arched violently against the bed and came in Ian’s mouth. Ian swallowed Christian’s load hungrily before pulling off of him and scrambling up Christian’s body to straddle his hips. Ian slipped down his underwear just far enough to free his aching cock and wrap his hand around it. Christian looked up at his lover with glazed eyes as he stroked his hands up and down Ian’s thighs, encouraging him with quiet moans and whispers of praise.

“That’s it, baby,” Christian cooed. “You’re so beautiful like this. Come for me.”

Ian felt the tingling rush and muscle spasms signalling his impending orgasm. He fisted himself in a punishing grip, rocking his hips reflexively as he jerked himself off fast, panting harshly. Beads of sweat began to form across his skin, and his hand began to cramp as he hovered painfully at the edge of release.

_It’s okay. You’re safe_ , he heard Will whisper in his memory.  _Let it go._

“Oh,  _shit!_.”

Ian threw his head back and groaned once, long and loud, as the first spurts of come erupted from his cock, painting Christian’s chest in long, milky ropes. Some of the it sailed past Christian’s head and landed against the the headboard and the wall behind the bed. The force of his orgasm pitched Ian forward with a clenching hand against Christian’s chest as he trembled and bucked his way through the aftershocks. Ian collapsed next to Christian on the bed, breathing laboredly. When Ian was certain his legs could carry him, he retrieved a damp cloth from the bathroom and cleaned them off before turning his lover back onto his side and curling up behind him, slipping a strong arm around his waist.

“That was good, baby,” Christian murmured, already fading away.

“Mmm, I’m glad,” Ian hummed and kissed the back of Christian’s shoulder. “I’ll stay until you fall asleep.”

Fifteen minutes later, Christian was snoring quietly, and Ian’s heart was still pounding anxiously. With a sigh, he kissed Christian’s temple and slipped silently from the bed and made his way back through the lightless condo, redressing as he went. He allowed himself a parting glance up the stairs toward the blackened bedroom before he rearmed the alarm and stepped back out into a now much colder, less welcoming night.   

***

June shoved a handbasket toward Will as they entered the downtown farmer’s market-- a little homegrown oasis of a marketplace just a few blocks from Will’s office, which seemed to spring up overnight every weekend during autumn. June had called Will that morning and promised him a free lunch if he was willing to meet her while she did a little shopping in the early afternoon.

“If this is the only way I finally get to spend some time with my brother, then so be it. I need a pound of pears and turnips, please,” June said sweetly though she brooked no argument. “I’m making turnovers.”

“I thought you said you’d feed me if I helped you shop,” Will whined.

June rolled her eyes as she handed over a brown paper-wrapped roast beef sandwich with dill and horseradish in a sourdough roll. Will looked pleased as he bit into the sandwich and wandered off toward the first stand. June picked over the most luscious-looking of the apples and the greenest of the cucumbers at the neighboring stall.

“So, other than getting that park project,” June preambled. “What’s new with my baby brother?”

Will swallowed a bite of meat and bread before answering. “Honestly, I feel as if I’ve been working myself into an early grave lately. I’m afraid even Marin’s halfway out the door with her suitcase by now.”

“You know what they say, ‘Happy wife, happy life,’” June quoted cheekily.

“Don’t I know it. I took her to a club for Latin dancing on Wednesday night, but it was kind of a disaster,” Will said, not willing to expound upon the details, and June feigned ignorance.

“Now that is something I have yet to understand. You loved doing musical theater in high school and college. And you were pretty good at it from what I remember.”

“Theater isn’t dancing. It’s choreography. And I got the singing-intensive parts. I just find dancing...embarrassing.”

“And we know how much you hate doing anything unless you have complete confidence that you’re going to be amazing at it,” June laughed. “Everyone falls on their ass at some point, little brother. Only a fool pretends otherwise. It’s like I tell my girls all the time: you have to be willing to fail. How else can you really learn?”

“I’m not a little girl anymore, June,” Will smirked, tossing his sandwich wrapper in a nearby bin as they moved on to the next stand.

“No, you’re not. You’re a grown man, so you should know better by now. And you should consider dancing lessons. It would make Marin happy.”

“Like that’s gonna happen,” Will spoke under his breath.

“What are you going to do for your wedding? You know everyone’s going to expect the groom to dance with his bride.”

Will cursed. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Oh, my gosh,” June gushed, drawn toward the plethora of red fruit as they passed the next stall. “These pomegranates and cranberries are absolutely gorgeous! They look like succulent jewels! Just look at...Will?”

June picked up a little paper carton of berries and turned toward the vacant space where her brother had once been. She looked all around her but saw no sign of Will.  _Dang it_. And then she saw him, Will’s mysterious friend, standing at another stand directly across from them, purchasing a brown paper bag overflowing with dried figs. _Hot damn_ , June thought. This was as close as she had ever been to the man, and June could see he really was a  _looker_. Not in the way her brother Will was, almost pretty with his boyish looks with puckish smile and bright blue eyes that mirrored her own. No, he was, like,  _manly_  sexy in his worn jeans and thin flannel shirt. And June didn’t know exactly what she meant by that, except that to her, he looked like the kind of man who would look in his element getting down and dirty doing yard work in the hot Texas sun, dirt smeared all over his arms and chest, sweat dripping down his chiseled abs and.... June snapped out of it with a shake of her head and regained control of her faculties enough to pick up her jaw off the ground. The man was joined by an attractive younger woman, and they moved off toward the end of the little marketplace. Will appeared around the corner of the stall then, wearing a canvas sombrero with chin strap that she had never seen before.

“Where the heck did you get that absurd hat?”

“I bought it off a vendor. It’s a little too bright out here.”

“It’s cloudy.” June regarded her brother with a suspicious eye. “Hey, do you know those people over there,” she asked, voice dripping with insinuation as she pointed toward the man of interest and his female companion.

“Nope,” Will shook his head a little too quickly, dutifully averting his gaze, oblivious to his sister’s slit-eyed glare. “Why do you ask?”

“Just thought they looked familiar, but I guess was mistaken.” June allowed herself one last, critical glance at the pair and noticed that the woman was holding a tote bag with a screen print of a dancing couple that looked much like the one she had seen the other day. At the cafe. By the woman who was spying on Will and that man! Then June had a brilliant idea.

“Gotta go, baby bro,” June rushed, shoving her sacks of goodies into her canvas bag and tossing her empty basket toward her brother. “We’ll talk later,” she said with a wave, leaving Will standing alone and perplexed in the middle of the cheerily-cozy farmer's market.

“She’s even more spazzy than usual,” Will spoke aloud to himself with a shake of his head. He bit deeply into a juicy, red apple he had filched from June’s basket as he wandered toward the opposite end of the marketplace in the direction of his office.

***  

June was no expert at covert surveillance, but she thought she was doing a pretty good job for an amateur. The couple walked leisurely and talked companionably and seemed to have no clue that they were being followed as June, sporting her largest shades and a headscarf, slunk surreptitiously behind them. Maybe she should consider a side career as a private investigator, she indulged. But in the next moment, she almost face planted into a lamppost, and she thought she might need to finesse her technique before she considered a career change.

When the man stopped to open a door for the woman, June halted and pretended to do some window shopping until both of her targets disappeared inside the late 19th century brick building, which featured large, ornate window arches across both floors. She sneaked up to the entrance of the building and looked at the little marquee next to the front door. The building seemed to be divided into four separate quadrants, each with their own corner entrance. The bottom floor at the corner where she now stood housed a quaint, little Vietnamese French bakery with the humorously-curious name of Pho King Merci. On the top floor, there was a dance studio.  _Bingo_. June removed her shades and scarf and ascended the steps just inside the entrance.

A separate door greeted her at the top of the single staircase. The rectangular window cut into the wooden door read  _Karina’s Dance Studio_ in ornate black and gold-shadowed script. A bell tinkled above the door as she stepped inside. A little lobby space opened up at the end of a short, narrow hallway, where sat a heavy, old-fashioned lobby desk, which was currently empty. To the right of the desk was a hallway where there seemed to be locker rooms. Toward the back of the studio, June could see an archway leading to another long hallway where signs pointing to a few separate practice studios and an office were hung. The lobby to the left opened up into a space with a large glass and wooden-beamed partition that divided a large studio room from the lobby. The floor had been laid with real wood and half of the walls inside the studio were fashioned out of exposed brick. A massive length of mirrors and a ballet bar had been attached to one of the long, side walls. At the far front of the studio, a bank of arched windows and a skylight flooded the space with natural light. It was a lovely space that remained faithful to the original architecture, and June was completely enamored.

The man of mystery appeared from the back hallway and stopped dead in his tracks when he noticed June standing there.

“Uh, I’m sorry,” said the man, regaining his composure. “We’re closed for lunch now, but I guess I forgot to turn the sign again."

“Oh,” June looked back toward the entrance. “I didn’t even notice a sign. I can just come back later.” June turned back toward the lobby, but he stopped her with a word.

“No. That’s okay,” said the man, stepping forward. “You’re already here, and I’m available. I’m Ian Alvarez-Carlisle,” the man offered his hand.

_Finally, a name to go with the face._ “June Bl...uh, Wylde. June Wylde. This is such a beautiful space,” she effused sincerely with a sweep of her hand.

“It is,” Ian nodded, looking around appreciatively. “The owner, Karina, is something of an architecture buff. It took her years to restore the place when she moved in here. She did most of the work herself.”

“Wow. I’m impressed.”

The man smiled at her again, and June could not help but smile back.

“I haven’t seen you here before,” Ian observed aloud. “Would you be interested in a tour of...?”

“I’ve seen what I needed to see.”

Ian raised a brow. “O...kay. We also offer a free lesson twice a month to potential students if you’d be intere....”

“I’m ready to sign up now.”

“You’re sure making this easy on me,” Ian said with a closed-lipped smile. “Have you had any dancing experience?”

“I’ve never had any lessons, if that’s what you mean. But I enjoy dancing with my husband. We’re not exactly display-worthy, but we have fun.”

Ian grinned. “Then you’ve already learned one of the most important rules. You’ll probably be interested in one of our couples classes then.”

“What class do you teach?”

“I teach a beginner’s class in Latin ballroom and a....”

“That’s the one I want!”

Ian could not help but laugh at her enthusiasm. Ian led June back into the lobby. He walked behind the desk and leaned over the computer. “Let me just check to see what kind of openings we have available. Okay, we have few spaces left for a Beginner’s Latin. It’s one class a week for nine weeks, and the first class starts tonight at seven.”

“It must be meant to be then,” June concluded, rocking gleefully on her toes.

“Okay, let me just take some information from you.” Ian looked up from his typing to really look at June then. “You know, there’s something so familiar about you. Since the moment I saw you, I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out where I’ve seen you before. Maybe we used to go to the same mass when were kids? Are you Catholic?”

“My husband is Episcopalian, sort of, but we're more of a...polyspiritual household.”

“Hm, maybe school? Did you go to school around here?”

“Houston,” June said with a smile and a shake of her head, enjoying this little game. “But my brother went to college around here,” she offered innocently. “Maybe you know him? William Bloom?”

For a brief moment, a mere particle of time, Ian looked as if she had just said something completely unexpected and quite unbelievable, as if she had said Sasquatch was real and she was related to him, to this hairy monster-beast with whom he happened to share an unknown past. He recovered quickly, but it was not soon enough. And that little concealed reaction-- one registering shock, surprise, and something else-- interested her most of all.

“Yeah, I do know him,” Ian said with a polite smile, but it had grown a bit fainter, more guarded now. “We roomed together in college for awhile.”

"Oh, so you're the reason my brother never came home on school holidays?"

Ian looked mortified, which seemed to amuse June immensely.

"Uh, I'm sorry...I...."

"No worries,” June waved him off. “Will took his whole newfound college independence pretty seriously. We’re much closer now, and he’s a good uncle to my daughters. That’s all I care about. Maybe you’d like to come over to our house for dinner sometime! Catch up with Will over a home-cooked meal? Are you married?”

Ian’s eyes widened, overwhelmed. “No, I’m not mar...uh...I have a boyfriend.”

“ _Oh_.” It was a loaded vowel, as June seemed to find his relationship status of particular import. “He’s welcome, as well. I guess I’ll be seeing you.”

“Oh, right. Tonight.”

“Tonight?” June looked blank.

“For the class?”

“Oh!” June laughed heartily at herself. “The class. That’s right.”

She had a  _look_ , Ian could not help but notice. A look uncannily similar to one he had often seen on her brother’s face, once upon a time. It was a look he had once grown to fear, and seeing it again on the sweet, bubbly face of the auburn-haired woman with Will’s same blue eyes offered him no comfort. As the chuckling woman waved goodbye and let herself out, Ian’s stomach clenched instinctively with trepidation.

***

Later that afternoon, Will re-entered his office to find a foil birthday balloon attached to a card sitting on his desk. _Huh?_  In the card, there was a gift certificate from some place called Karina’s and a handwritten message that read,  _Make someone happy. Learn something new. June._  He reached for his phone.

“You realize my birthday isn’t for a month, right?”

“I know that, silly,” June laughed. “But the timing couldn’t have been more perfect! Your first lesson is tonight and....”

“Lesson?”

“Yes, I bought you dancing lessons!”

“You what?!”

“Now now,” June chided. “Don’t start with yer hollerin’. I already spoke with Marin, and she....”

“You spoke with Marin,” Will repeated flatly.

“Yes, and Marin agreed that it’s just the  _perfect_ thing! It’s something that the two of you can do together, and once I explained to Marin that with the wedding just around the corner....”

_Of course she did, that conniving little...._ Will pinched the bridge of his nose and took a calming breath. “Fine, June. I get it. You’re not going to let this go until I give in,” Will spoke will barely-controlled, silken-voiced fury. “I’ll talk to you later.” He hung up without bidding his meddling sibling adieu and immediately called Marin.

“Did you get it,” Marin asked him excitedly as soon as she answered his call.

“Oh, yeah. I got it.”

“Isn’t it just the  _perfect_ thing?” 

_Did they rehearse this ambush?_ “I don’t know if that’s the word I would use for it.”

“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself! Your sister is always so thoughtful....”

“I wouldn’t use that word either.”

“I’m sensing from the tone of your voice that you’re going to try to drag your heels on this, but don’t bother.” Marin’s voice had switched into no-nonsense mode, and Will knew he was in trouble. “Will. I’m asking you to stop arguing the toss and grasp the nettle, as they say.”

“I have no idea what you just said.”

“Suck it up and grow a pair, all right? For my sake. And who knows, it might just be brilliant.” Will grumbled incomprehensibly, and Marin knew he was weakening. “Splendid! I can’t wait to hear all about your first lesson when you get home tonight.”

“Wait, you’re not going with me?”

“No, darling. I’m sorry. I can’t make it tonight. I’m going to be at the office until late. But I want you to go and enjoy yourself for the both of us. And I have some very important and exciting news to tell you when you get home.”

“But....”

The line clicked off on the other end. Will slammed his phone on his desk and sat down heavily in his office chair. He was an adult, dammit! A grown man! He could make his own decisions. He would not be strong-armed by a couple of scheming, interloping young biddies. No matter how much he might care for them.

***

Will should not have been surprised. Not with the way his month had been going. But he could not wipe the look of astonishment off his face fast enough when he entered the lobby at Karina’s Dance Studio and discovered Ian Alvarez-Carlisle, of all people, lounging behind it. In this newly-constructed universe where probabilities and odds had come to have absolutely no meaning, Ian was the only person who could have been behind that desk.

Ian seemed to echo Will’s newly-found paradoxical sense of expected surprise when he looked up and saw Will standing there and merely laughed with a kind of grave amusement and shook his head resignedly.

“Of course, you’re here,” Ian said soberly. “I should have known the minute I found out she was your sister.”

“You met my sister?” Will panicked.

Ian rolled his eyes. “She asked me outright if I knew you. I’m not going to make myself a liar for your sake. I told her we were friends, nothing more. It’s not my job to handle your business. And it is your business who you decide to tell about us...our... _situation_.”

“Thank you for that. That was...merciful.”

Ian shrugged. He did not give a damn about Will’s gratefulness, and he had zero interest in making Will’s life any easier at the moment. “I guess you’ll be taking the lessons with your fiancée, which should be enormously awkward. That is, if you still want to take lessons.”

“Uh, wait, no...um...it’s just me. Marin couldn’t come.”

Ian scowled. “You  _do_ realize this is a couples class.”

“I don’t know anything! They just threw this certificate in my face,” Will waved the paper ticket around for emphasis, “gave me no choice in the matter, and here I am!”

Ian smothered a smile. “We do have a singles’ beginners’ Latin ballroom. But...,” Ian looked toward the computer on the desk. “Yeah, no, there aren’t any openings for the singles class for months.”

“No, um, I’ll just come back with Marin another time.”

“Sure. Fine. I can just refund your money for the missing class, but you’re going to be far behind the other couples next week.”

Will sighed. He so wanted to take this way out, but he was hesitant to disappoint Marin again. As Ian watched Will standing there, looking torn, Ian suddenly got a wonderful idea. A wonderful, awful idea. He could not help it. And even if he could, he was not sure he wanted to. Not anymore. Perhaps the desire for revenge had finally taken root within him.

“Actually,” Ian began, coming around the desk, “you can be my partner for the night.”

Before Will had time to protest, Ian was grabbing Will’s hand and dragging him toward the grand studio.

“W..wait...what,” Will stuttered, stumbling behind Ian. Ian tugged on Will’s hand, urging Will to keep up with him. “But I...uh....”

All eyes were on them as they stepped onto the floor. Karina looked at the two men with expectant interest, her eyes floating down to their joined hands. Will tried to pull his hand away then, but Ian’s hand tightened almost painfully around his. Will sighed, giving up the fight, at least for the moment, at the prospect of causing a scene.

“This is my husband, Will,” Ian announced to the class, and Will almost choked on the sudden leaping of his pounding heart in his throat. 

_Oh, that vindictive son of a bitch!_


End file.
